Empire
by Warringer
Summary: This is an AU set in my Back Home multiuniverse. Vorlons and Shadows act faster than anyone thought and the remenants of the Interstellar Commonwealth are forced to leave their home universe. They get from one war into another...
1. Chapter 1

Empire

by Warringer

Prolog

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Admiral Tenchi Masaki, commander of _ICS Black Knight_ closed his eyes as he slumped back in the large chair.

It had been of no use. Not at all. The work of more than fifty years, gone in the matter of a few month.

"Damn them," he cursed once again, the crew members on the bridge thinking the same.

Of course it had been the Vorlons and the Shadows. More the Shadows than the Vorlons through. They had managed to produce the spark that ignited the massive barrel of black power that had been the galactic political scene. The Galactic Union and the Galactic Federation had gone to war and the relatively young Interstellar Commonwealth had been caught right in the middle.

And to top it of the Vorlons and the Shadows had managed to find out that the humans of Earth where for all intents and purposes V'Ampier, the ancient race of First Ones that had already been wiped out by both races. Earth's mankind had moved to take their inheritance from Nathan, but it had been to late.

Even the last efforts of mankind and the races of the Interstellar Commonwealth had been naught. They had come and gone through all defenses they had been set up and reduced nearly all worlds of the Commonwealth into glowing husks or large debris fields.

Tenchi stared at the screen in front of him with teary eyes. Only one was left. He was sure that it had been the plans of both Shadows and Vorlons to keep this world as their last piece to destroy and end the threat of the reborn V'Ampier to their 'debate'.

Earth.

Together with the Moon the planet still existed, untouched by the First Ones or the massive galactic war that was going on around them.

Sure, both the Jurians and the Minbari had tried to take Earth, but the planetary Paratron shield had prevented them from even getting to the planet, while the ground and orbital based weapons had taken potshots at the fleets and Home Guard helped.

But it was of no use. Nathan had informed GDI High Command that fleets of the Shadows and the Vorlons where on their way towards Earth and he doubted that the Paratron shield would be able to do much to defend against them since they could throw around firepower that was in league with a Jump Bomb.

And than there was the problem with the massive amounts of refugees that had come to Earth for protection. Millions, even billions of people from all species of the Interstellar Commonwealth and even some allied races. Mostly they had managed to flee in any kind of civilian ship and in many cases the last bits and pieces of their military fleets had managed to get to Earth.

Now it was slowly getting crowded in orbit. But the Solar Trees were a great help. Especially since all ten thousand of them had gotten to Earth and huddled in orbit, taking docking requests of the civilian and military ships to unload their cargo of refugees. And as even the smallest of these Dyson Trees was able to take a population of a million people and provide life support, water and even food for them, they were the reason why Earth was able to take as many refugees as it had.

But now it was all questionable.

Once again he closed his eyes and breathed in deep.

The disguise that had made him look like a fifty year old man dropped and showed everyone the real face of his biologically twenty five year old body. No one around him cared much through. They knew him and they knew that he looked younger than he pretended to look.

Than he stood up, straightening his uniform. It was still an Earth Force uniform due to a special order of the GDI.

He knew that he would die today, if their last gambit didn't work. And he was ready to die for what he believed, no knew was right. It certainly wasn't the 'debate' of the Shadows and Vorlons, nor where it the old society structures of the galaxy the Jurians and Minbari tried to imprint on any of the younger races.

"Countdown?" he asked into the room and felt that Setsuna walked up to him.

"Ten minutes until the First Ones arrive."

He closed his eyes and nodded slowly.

Than he looked around on the bridge of Dark Knight. They weren't only humans. Over the years of the Interstellar Commonwealth, the fleets had intermixed and his crew was maybe the most diverse of all ships in the fleet. He looked into the faces of Ferrons, Dilgar, Nomads, Narn and several others as he glanced around. He knew some of them for several years now.

"We are getting a transmission," the voice of his Dilgar communication officeer suddenly said." It's from the TIT campus. They are broadcasting everywhere."

"Put it on shipwide," Tenchi ordered and the voice from the 1C caused most of the crew to stop for a moment.

"...is Usagi Chiba," the voice of the well known head of the Woven Fate Technomagical Guild said." _Elysian Fields_ and _Mare Serenitatis_ are over the poles as I speak and ready to deploy the Tyrelium torpedos on the Paratron shield. The members of the Guild are at the AODI-5 facilities and begin to the rituals. With any luck it will work. If not..."

Tenchi breathed in deep. She didn't need to continue. Everyone knew what was a stake. There was a rather loud silence that came over the still open channel before another voice began to speak. The voice just about everyone on Earth knew.

"This is Seneca," the voice of the sentient Internet came over the speakers in a surprisingly serious tone." It was a pleasure to know everyone on Earth. I don't know if we will get through with this, but I hope that we will. If not, I will see you all on the other side. As an old friend said fifty years ago..."

There was another silence before Seneca resumed with the recording of a voice Tenchi knew from back than. He had been there when he had said these words.

_"Lo, there do I see my father,_

_Lo, there do I see my mother, my sisters and my brothers,_

_Lo, there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning,_

_Lo, they do call to me,_

_They bid me take my place on Asgard in the halls of Valhalla,_

_Where the brave may live forever."_

Tenchi swallowed and closed his eyes again. It was strange that an AI could become this much of a hero that anyone knew about him, even all this decades after his destruction.

He looked around and than saluted sharply.

"It has been an honor to serve with everyone of you."

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Millions upon millions of slipstream events deposited an equally high number of ships not even ten million kilometers away from Earth, still several million kilometers away from the outer edge of the wavering and buckling red glow of the planetary Paratron shield that was originating out of a boundary effect of the solar wind with the magnetic field of Earth.

These ships were separated into two large fleets that approached the planet and its shield from different angles. Both Vorlons and Shadows had thrown all they could into what would be the long since final strike against the V'Ampier, who dared to meddle with their affairs by deciding to be neutral in the 'debate'. It was rare that both races were able to work together, this was one of these times.

Most Vorlons and Shadows still remembered the first time they had put down the V'Ampier. They had thought that they had dealt with them, but the had turned out to be wrong. They were back and they were once again meddling. It would end now.

Tens of Death Clouds and Planet destroyers had been put to use in these two fleets.

As they drew closer to the shield they were surprised. They had thought that they would get against more defenses.

Than it happened. The red glowing shield around the planet buckled from the north pole and the south pole of the shield. The blucking became stronger and stronger until it seemed like it had turned into a second sun, protuberances of red licking out into space. The glow intensified before changing colors, going through the entire spectrum of visible light from red to blue, the change once again starting from the poles of the shield.

The last azure blue color remained and seemed to darken until it was nearly black. After a minute or so the shield changed again, the azure color once again become more and more intense and began to cast a blue light across space that nearly blotted out the light of Sol.

As the blue had reached its highest intensity, the shield expanded with the speed of light, loosing in intensity and color.

It disappeared as it had reached a diameter of five million kilometers, taking everything inside with it and leaving behind the fleets of two old enemies.


	2. Chapter 2

Empire

by Warringer

Chapter 1

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He winced as a sudden sense of pain shot through his neck and reached up with a hand to rub his neck. Around him everyone else was doing the same, while they all looked at the large holographic display in the center of The Office.

"It seems like the transfer is complete," the voice of Nathan noted in a low voice." All AODI-5 facilities have gone offline. I advise a complete maintenance."

Everyone still stared at the hologram and the data of surrounding space that slowly poured in through numerous high-speed data lines of Atlantis, coming from a number of Beholder Mk II satellites at the edge of Earth's magnetic field.

Slowly the independent AI of Atlantis, Merlin, combined the pieces of information and the holographic representation of a completely different solar system began to form on the hologram. Six planetes, one Hot Jupiter close to the star, two terrestrial planets close to the 'green zone' of the star, two gas giants further out an a small ice planet finishing of the system. And there was an asteroid belt between the two gas giants.

The star itself was a G6Vb, a yellow dwarf star with about ninety percent of Sol's mass. More data proclaimed that the star was about two billion years old and would continue to live for the next nine to ten billion years.

And Earth was sitting in the lower third of the stars 'green zone' about ten million kilometers distant to the second planet and receiving about as much energy as it had gotten from Sol.

"Oh my god," Marcus Swanson, Minister of Defense of the Interstellar Commonwealth, moaned out and all but collapsed backwards into the couch he was standing in front of.

Hikaru von Bismark, sixth President of the Interstellar Commonwealth, closed his eyes and breathed in deep, before rubbing his eyes slowly.

"We did it," he muttered and leaned back into his arm chair and opened his eyes again, looking out of the massive window pane of The Office, the analogue to the Oval Office.

For several long minutes he stared out into the darkness surrounding Atlantis, only broken by pillar of light coming from the spotlights that illuminated the massive artificial city as it rested on the ground of the Atlantic Ocean, protected by a massive dome of energy.

Now and than the pillars of light illuminated large shapes that slowly circled around the city like giant sharks.

But just like Atlantis these shapes where the result of human engineering. Some of them where Angelus class submersible carriers, Michael class submersible dreadnoughts or Holland class submersible destroyers, the latest classes of Blue Navy vessels that were used for planetary defense from oceans and were even able to get to another planet on their own, through their range in space was very limited and they were less agile than a Mercury capsule from a hundred years ago.

In water however they where able to reach high velocities of several thousand kilometers per hour thanks to super-cavitation.

Von Bismark closed his eyes again for a moment as he noticed that one of the Hollands that passed a pillar of light bore the symbol of the Royal Ferron Navy.

"Where are we?" he finally asked into the silent room.

"We currently have not enough data to even take a guess," Merlin said slowly." But we can be sure that we are not in Kansas anymore. We briefly passed Third Space for about one Plank-time, so it is safe to say that we are in a reality parallel to our home reality."

"God," Von Bismak said just barely audible and placed his head on his hands as he leaned forward on his large polished oak desk.

All he wanted to do now was curl up in a corner and wrap wings and tail around himself.

For a moment he once again doubted his sanity for getting into politics after a short and successful career in the GDI Navy. But no, he had to follow the footsteps of his great grandfather, who happened to be Otto von Bismark, chancellor of the Prussian Empire in the late nineteenth century.

For a moment he wondered how his sisters were doing. Hotaru was a Marine Major and currently deployed on a Solar Tree, while Hinata happened to be a Technomage and had been at the Italian AODI-5 facility during the transfer.

He swallowed and slowly let his arms drop on the table. He felt like Atlas, carrying the world on his shoulders. In a sense he really carried the weight of the world on his shoulders. Why had the Shadows and Vorlons chosen his time in office to have their pissing match?

Once again he looked up.

"How many have been saved?"

"About twenty billion people from all races of the Interstellar Commonwealth and their allies such as the Shin'bi and others," the voice of Merlin noted." All with genetically and culturally diverse enough populations of prevent dying out."

"How many ships?" Swanson asked from his seat, his voice close to breaking.

"One point two million civilian ships of all sizes, ten thousand military vessels of all sizes, as well as the Nomad _Home_ and _HQ Hanse_ of the Hansa Cosmica."

Von Bismark slowly closed his eyes again.

"Merlin, prepare Atlantis for surfacing."

"Yes, Mr. President."

Atlantis had been maybe one of the most ambitious project of the young Interstellar Commonwealth. Back in 2014, when the Commonwealth had been founded it had lacked a capital city. So they had decided to build one nearly from scratch.

Nathan had been very helpful and provided the plans of the old Atlantis, which had been a massive space worthy city, able to go to other galaxies if needed. But the Commonwealth hadn't the technologies to replicate the old Atlantis. The new Atlantis wasn't space worthy, with its antigravity systems were barely able to suppress enough weight to make her swim and slowly drift across the Atlantic Ocean.

In the case of emergencies Atlantis could submerge and drop down to the ground of the ocean, protected by strong energy fields that kept the water in check, while the dome stretched out over the nine kilometers diameter city and its one kilometer high central dome.

Seven million people lived in Atlantis, about a tenth of them working for the Commonwealth's government.

Von Bismark breathed in deep and slowly shook his head.

"Lets get to work," he slowly said." We need to find out where we are and what we have to deal with."

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His view slowly changed, as if angled towards the blue-brown-green globe of a world he had never seen before. Considering that he had yet to leave his home, it was not really surprising.

As his view angled down, he was able to see a massive battle ranging above the planet. Light gray triangular vessels of several different classes where fighting against dark boxy vessels that sported massive turrets for their vessels.

Beams of light and plasma were traded between the massive vessels of both sides as his view bucked and weaved between the single shots that caused ships of both sides to take massive damage while others detonated in spectacular displays.

His view slowly began to come closer to two particular vessels that looked very similar to each other. Both had the same triangular shape, but that was where the similarities ended. One was partly smoothed in its surface and of a light gray color, while the other was dark gray and sported four massive turrets that where was long as one of the massive vessels next to it.

One of these massive turrets began to fire, slamming into the other ships shield, penetrating it and smashing its way through the ship, liquefying half of it. The beam continued on and smalled into the surface of the planet.

Once again his view changed and he was able to see how the beam of the weapon came out of the other side of the planet.

The beam disappeared and he woke up.

"Wake up, you wanted to help me pick some druids."

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"How are they?" Tenchi asked concerned as he looked down onto the inert form of Setsuna laying on the medical bed in front of him.

Next to the bed with Setsuna were the beds of D and K, the two avatars of _Dark_ _Knight_. Just a moment after the transfer into this different reality, the had moaned in pain and collapsed. To make it even more concerning was that _Dark_ _Knight_ herself had gone into a state that could best be described as a coma.

She had lost all control over her body, that was a transformed Warlock class battleship and began to drift after a few uncontrolled bursts from her gravitic drive that had send her into a slowly rotating movement. Her weapons also had flickered for a short time, but nothing had really happened safe for a single shot of a rail gun that was now racing into the interstellar void.

Right now she didn't react to anyone, not even Tenchi, who was bonded to the Vorlon hybrid Warlock. The crew had to run most things safe for the subconscious, autonomous things like life support, which increased the workload. Tenchi was glad for this as it prevented the crew to really think about what had happened.

"They are stable," the head of the medical personal, Major Dr. Joachim Schmidt, said." But I'm reading a heightened activity in their telepathic centers."

Schmidt looked down on his PDA.

"If I didn't knew better, I would think that our XO had jumped from a P16 right up to becoming a P18."

Tenchi blinked and than looked at Schmidt for a moment.

"P18? Is that even possible?"

"Theoretically at least. The P-scale has no upper limit."

Tenchi closed his eyes for a moment and breathed in deep.

"And the avatars?"

"The same," Schmidt said." They also have made a jump when it comes to their telepathy. I have no idea why."

Tenchi nodded and slowly sat down next to Setsuna.

"Thank you, Major."

"Sir," Schmidt said and slowly left the room to take care of several other crewmen that were to be treated for headaches and other stuff that had happened during the moments when _Dark_ _Knight_ had lost control.

The increased telepathy was explaining what had happened and why Tenchi himself was having a headache, through Aspirin had been enough to treat it. Setsuna was bonded to _Dark_ _Knight_ to prevent her to go insane because of the amount of thoughts she received, unable to filter or shut them out. _Dark_ _Knight_ acted as this filter and as a side effect increasing her lifespan as she didn't have aged since Tenchi and _Dark_ _Knight_ had taken her in.

The transfer seemed to have suddenly increased the amount of thoughts Setsuna could read and it had overwhelmed the filters of _Dark_ _Knight_. Both had get used to increased amount of thoughts and would most likely be out for a while longer than.

"I need you, Setsuna," he slowly and silently said and took the womans limb, leather gloved hand.

She was one of his best and oldest friends. He didn't want to loose her because of the transfer and her going insane.

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Admiral Ban Danna, highest remaining officer of the Royal Ferron Navy, stared on the large screen that hung in front of Central Command of his flagship, the massive Ferron Tillman class dreadnought _HMS Red Palace_.

_Red_ _Palace_ was moving through the system of moons and debris rings that surrounded the first of the massive gas giants in the outer system of Tartarus, as Commonwealth officials called this system. Around Red Palace was a small fleet of vessels that were part of the about one thousand Ferron Navy ships that had managed to flee from the destruction of the entire Vega system by the hand of the Vorlons. About fifty thousand civilian ships had managed to do the same, all going to Earth.

The all had hoped that the Paratron shield of Ferrol would hold, but the Vorlons had taken their time to break through the planetary shield with more than ten of their planet destroyers before destroying the planet. Itself.

Danna closed his eyes for a moment and breathed in deep. He didn't want to think about it. The wounds of the loss of his homeworld was still to fresh on his mind.

"Contact," one of the sensory operators suddenly said." Shuttle sized vessel, unknown configuration. Moving at relative velocity of point zero zero five cee. Distance ten thousand. Designating Lima One."

Danna looked towards the operator and than back at the screen. It showed that the latest generation of Ferron officers were going through a GDI academy and took over their designations for better communication between the different members of the Interstellar Commonwealth.

"Visual?"

"One moment."

Danna closed his eyes for a moment and breathed in deep before looking back at the screen.

The screen changed from showing the Jupiter like planet to that of a strange white colored vessel with a sowhat triangular configuration and three large wing like structures jutting out from the central body.

He licked his lips and his hand reached up to stroke through his copper colored hair.

"Communication?"

"Not ye..."

The communication operator wasn't able to finish as the sensory operator called up again.

"Contact! Cruiser sized vessel, unknown configuration. Moving at relative point zero zero seven cee. Distance twenty thousand. Designating Lima Two."

The operator was silent for a moment.

"Lima Two is going on intercept course to Lima One."

"Visual of Lima Two."

The screen split up and showed another larger vessel. It looked very much like a large arrowhead with a massive tower like superstructure on top of it.

"Lima One has noticed us and increases velocity at twenty one gee and goes on intercept course with us."

Danna breathed in deep and closed his eyes for a moment.

"Great," he muttered under his breath and looked as the visual image of both unknown vessels where turning about to come towards his small fleet of twenty ships.

Than he pulled himself straight up.

"Sound Increased Combat Readiness. And notify Earth about a first contact situation to the natives."

Blue lights began to flash throughout the Red Palace and the other Ferron vessels as the ships were put to Increased Combat Readiness.

Danna didn't know exactly how to react besides notifying Earth and alert his ships. He didn't know anything about this reality and less about the natives. To him it looked like the small shuttle craft was fleeing from the cruiser and tried to make a run to his ships to get to safety.

This could proceed to get into any direction he could imagine. Criminals fleeing from the police, VIPs getting away from pirates, rebels trying to outrun an oppressive military government.

He wanted to wait for the reply from Earth, but he had a feeling that he wouldn't be able to wait.


	3. Chapter 3

Empire

by Warringer

Chapter 2

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"I should have stayed in bed."

His companion grinned at him as she worked away on her console of the Imperial shuttle.

"And miss all the fun?"

"Fun?" he asked and looked at her for a moment." If your idea of fun is to steal secret documents from a purposely secure Imperial base, shoot the whole place together and than run in a shuttle, while being chased by a Star Destroyer..."

She grinned.

"Come on, Kyle," she responded." We both know that you enjoy doing this."

"I'd rather enjoy watching some Twi'lec dancers," Kyle Katarn grumbled and looked at this console, before glancing into the back of the shuttle, where two unconscious Imperial officers where laying tied and gaged on the floor.

Than he looked back up at at his companion, Jan Ors.

"You really think that we can loose them in that system?"

Jan grinned a little more.

"The system got a gas giant orbiting very close to its sun. If we can get them there, we might as well be on the run to Hutt space when they get out of its gravity well."

Kyle chuckled and shook his head.

"First we have to get there."

"Trust me, Kyle. I know what I'm doing."

"I hate those words being said in that in that sequence."

The shuttle shook very slightly as it left hyperspace and accelerated. Of the port side Kyle could see the multicolored ball of one gas giant. Than he looked down at his console again and at the sensors.

"Say," he spoke up after a moment," should there be ships in this system?"

Jan blinked once and looked at the sensors.

"No there shouldn't," she answered after a moment." They don't look like Imperials through."

"Speaking of Imperials..." Kyle noted dryly as the contact of a single Imperial-I Star Destroyer appeared on the screen.

"Sooner than I thought."

Kyle looked at his partner in crime and scratched his chin.

"Should we make a run for that gas giant of yours or should we try our luck with that unknown fleet?"

Jan looked back at him.

"What do you think."

Kyle shrugged and than looked back at the sensors.

"I got this gut feeling that those aren't the bad guys."

Jan nodded and directed the Lambda shuttle towards the unknown fleet.

"Than we go for your 'good guys'. We can get to the gas giant later if they turn out to be 'bad guys'."

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"You gotta be fucking kiddin' me."

Admiral Sally Ryan stared at the hologram that hung in the Command Center of what used used to be the Solar Defense Center on the Solar Tree Shabazza. Admiral Ryan was the head of Home Guard and as the sole surviving member of the Commonwealth High Command, she was essentially the head of the entire remaining military fleet of the Commonwealth. All in all about ten thousand ships of various classes from various navies of the member nations of the Commonwealth, or what was left from it in the aftermath of the 'First One Massacre'.

"No ma'am," a technician said slowly." That are the images of the data-feeds we get from _Red Palace_ and the Beholder they placed at the gas giant."

The surprisingly young looking woman, being well beyond seventy years old, she still looked like she was in her early fifties, glared at the technician.

"Than why am I seeing a freakin' Star Destroyer and a Lambda shuttle?"

"You sure that Seneca hasn't put Return of the Jedi on the holo?" a voice from behind asked and Sally turned to look at the owner of the voice.

Vice Admiral Marco Ramsey, the head of Wolfpack Fleet, grinned at her.

"Shut up Marco," Sally said with a frown and she looked back into the Command Center from her raised platform inside the massive wooden dome of the CC's hall." Flash message to Red Palace. If attacked, shoot to disable not to kill. They should make sure to take out shielding, weapons, communication and engines. I want the crew alive and the computer intact."

Marco walked up to her and stood next to her and leaned against the handrail of the platform.

"If I remember correctly, a Star Destroyer had about ten thousand man ground force aboard. Our Marines are going to encounter problems while boarding that ship."

Sally rolled her eyes.

"You sure that you remember the trilogy? Stormies are horrible shoots."

Marco snorted and shook his head.

"It may be some decades since I last watched them, but that were the movies. How about real life?"

Sally closed her eyes and exhaled audible.

"We might need some Guardians to reinforce the Marines."

For a moment she wondered what would happen if Chavez had gotten his will to call the Guardians 'Jedi'.

"And make that our best Marines for the job."

As she heard Marco say that she snorted. It was kind of ironic in several ways that the best Marine unit happened to the the 501st Marine Regiment under Major Hotaru von Bismark.

"Get me Major von Bismark on line and notify General Clark that we need a few Guardians."

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Captain Tanner Bishto of the Star Destroyer _Tyrannic_ glared one of the displays. Next to him his Executive Officer, Commander Corbin Wain, looked at the same display.

The _Tyrannic_ had just left hyperspace, following the Lambda shuttle that two Rebels had used to flee from Darasis II after pretty much destroying the base on the planet. By now the _Tyrannic_ was on an intercept course and had deployed her TIEs to hunt down the shuttle.

"Show me the ships of that fleet," he ordered with the firm voice of an Imperial officer and the technician complied.

The view on the screen changed to show a visual image of about twenty ships of three different types. All of the ships where based around the same general layout, but differed in their actual shape and size. The center of the group of vessels was a massive ship about twice the length of the _Tyrannic_ and was surrounded by the others. The second class of ships was about the size of _Tyrannic_ and the third class maybe about the size of a Victory.

Bishto narrowed his eyes as he stared at the ships as if trying to force them to give their identity to him.

"Get me an identification of those ships," he ordered and next to the technician another was beginning to search the database of the ship for a match with the signature and the visuals of the vessels that hung in space.

"Look at the size of those turrets," Wain noted dryly.

Bishto frowned and glared at him for a moment before looking at the other technician.

"And?"

The technician shook his head.

"No sir, the database doesn't have a match to the vessels."

Bishto's frown intensified as he once again glared a the screen.

"A new race of aliens," he said slowly and with scorn in his voice.

Than he looked up and out of the large viewports of the bridge.

"Those turrets are clearly overcompensating," he said after a while walking towards the command walkway, hands crossed on his back." They can't have turbo lasers so they are compensating for that lack with the size of their weapons. They won't be a threat to this ship."

Abruptly he turned around and looked at Wain.

"We will deal with them after we have destroyed the Rebels. They seem to think that the aliens can help them."

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Admiral Danna frowned as he looked back at the hologram that hung in Central Command of _Red Palace_.

"Any answer to our hails?"

"No, sir. No response on any slipstream or Tachyon channel."

Danna was getting slightly nervous. The unknown cruiser had deployed fighters that looked like spheres with attached pane like panels that had to be a bitch to fly. As an old starfury pilot, he knew what he was talking about.

And both fighters and ship where still going after the shuttle, which was 5000 away at this moment.

"Deploy Starfuries," he ordered, fully well knowing that the pilots where already sitting in their 'furies after being ordered to Increased Combat Readiness.

"Starfuries are being deployed."

Around the small cluster of his task force a cloud of Stafuries were to be seen on the small tactical overlay.

"Sir, the shuttle is hailing us via EM radio."

Danna raised one of his massive eyebrows and nodded.

"Put in on the speakers."

A voice that sounded like that of a human male was heard over the speakers, saying something in a strange language. It didn't really surprise Danna. They were in another universe, why should anyone in this one speak anything like English, Ferron or Intercosmo.

"Uhm... It seems to be a variant of Ancient," the communication technician said after a while." V'Ampier Ancient."

Now that was surprising Danna, but he didn't say anything as the voice came again, this time being translated into Ferron with the translator.

"... is the shuttle _Tibrian_," the voice said," Please respond."

Danna narrowed his eyes.

"Reply on the same channel," he ordered.

The communication technician nodded.

"This is Admiral Ban Danna of the Ferron Royal Navy ship _Red_ _Palace_ to shuttle _Tibrian_. Do you require assistance?"

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Sally Ryan fought the urge to roll her eyes as she listened to the data-feed that came from _Red_ _Palace_. Instead she looked at Marco.

"Any thoughts?"

"We should avoid pissing off the Empire," he answered with a slight frown." On the other side, that shuttle could be Rebels and helping them could get us a foot into the Rebel Alliance."

Sally sighed and glared back at the visuals of the data-feed.

"We could try warning of the SD," she noted and than blinked, looking around." Anyone finally identified the class of the SD?"

"Could be an Imperial," someone from the direction of the data-analysts.

"I know that its an Imperial Star Destroyer," Sally said a little louder." I want to know which class..."

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"...is the Red Palace of the Royal Ferron Navy," the unknown human sounding voice came over the speaker in one of the communication consoles of _Tyrannic_." Be advised that you have entered restricted space and are to leave this system."

Bishto glared at the console as if it had just insulted him personally.

"Return the hail," he ordered. "This is Captain Bishto of the Imperial Star Destroyer _Tyrannic_..."

-----------------------------------------------------------

Kyle looked at Jan as they listened to the conversation between the massive fleet and the _Tyrannic_.

"At least Bishto was telling the truth about intercepting dangerous Rebel terrorists," he noted dryly." I wonder how the Admiral is going to react."

"I'm more concerned about those fighters of him."

Kyle looked out of the cockpit and at the x-shaped stubby fighters that had pulled up next to them.

"They don't look very useful through."

The radio chose this moment to respond.

"_Red_ _Palace_ to shuttle _Tibrian_," the voice said." You are advised to follow our Starfuries to the hangar deck of _Red_ _Palace_."

Outside six more of those x-shaped fighters fell into formation with the shuttle and two of them surprised Kyle and Jan with impossible maneuvers, turning their stubby nose towards the shuttle without changing the direction where they were going.

"I wonder when the shooting will start..." Kyle wondered out loud.

"Right about now," Jan noted as several TIEs entered weapons range and fired at the x-shaped fighters.


	4. Chapter 4

Empire

by Warringer

Chapter 3

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"Admiral, our Starfuries are attacked by the fighters of the _Tyrannic_."

Danna frowned.

"Order to the 'furies to fire at will. Order to the fleet. Undock all parasites and launch remaining Starfuries."

The communication technician nodded and made preparations to relay these orders to the rest of the fleet.

Danna glared at the screen in front of him. A first contact with a new race in a new universe and it went the way of the Krazaki. On the screen he could watch how the number of ships in the fleet literally tripled as the parasites undocked from their mother ships, strengthening the fleet with frigates, corvettes and gunboats and adding quite the amount of close quarters firepower.

He looked up for a moment as the tactical officer next to him began to work on the fire solutions with the help of the computer.

"Two frigates and four corvettes are going to the Tibrian and tow her out of the fire zone."

-----------------------------------------------------------

Kyle blinked quite a few times at the rather surreal dogfight outside of the shuttle. These Starfuries or whatever they were called where more maneuverable and tough than anything he had seen before this moment.

They twisted, sidestepped and made maneuvers no fighter should have the right to do. They could turn on the spot and open fire on a following TIE without even changing the direction they were flying, turn back and make a run for the next TIE.

But that didn't make them invincible. TIEs would literally swarm them and get in shots and destroy a number of them, but other than the TIEs they possessed shields. Even than they were able to destroy a few of those Starfuries. Another thing against the Starfuries was that the TIEs were faster than the x-shaped crafts.

"Kyle," Jan said from besides Kyle, who had to mostly concentrate on his controls to get the shuttle out of the line of fire, but even than getting hit into the shield." We're getting some more visitors."

Kyle looked up as six large ships moved in on the dogfight that was happening around them. The six ships where shaped like eggs, nut bristling with weapon emplacements Two of them where larger than the other four. And all were now shooting up the TIEs, while coming closer. Bright white glowing beams of energy lanced out into space between the larger eggs and the TIEs that tried to get to them or make a run for it. Similar beams, but lower in number came from the smaller eggs, but those also seemed to use turbo lasers or blasters.

There was a glaring difference between most weapon fire Kyle knew. Those bright white beams were just standing between the ships and their targets, there was no possibility for the TIEs to get away or dodge as the moment the beam was fired a long torrent stood between the egg and the TIE and beyond, disappearing in the distance.

The resulting fight was very short, leaving just the eggs, the Starfuries and the shuttle.

"Shuttle _Tibrian_, this is _Ar_ _Pe_ _Ef_ _Zero_ _One_. We are going to tractor you out of the fire zone, the fleet is about to take care of the _Tyrannic_."

"What? Tractor?"

Before Kyle could say or do anything, the shuttle was locked in a tractor beam and the eggs jumped forward at a speed greater than that of the shuttle before.

-----------------------------------------------------------

By now Bishto had developed a twitch as he glared at the sensory display. First the TIEs had lost against the primitives fighters and now the primitives had undocked some sort of parasites and used them to 'safe' the shuttle and destroy the entire complement of TIEs he had avilable.

He breathed in deep and tried to calm himself. He would not loose his temper in front of his subordinates. That would not be professional and Bishto prided himself to be very professional, having left the Imperial Navy Academy as the best of his class, which also explained why he had been able to get command of a Star Destroyer as fast as he had.

"I want a fire solution for he Ion Cannons. Immobilize the capital ships, while we destroy the smaller ones."

For a moment he tried to imagine the looks on the primitives face when their large ships were disabled by the Ion Cannons of the _Tyrannic_. He allowed a very slight smile to cross his face for just a moment as he thought about his upcoming promotion for the capture of the primitives ships and leading a fleet to invade their homeworld.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Danna shook his head slightly, but he would not make the mistake to underestimate his enemy just because his fighters had gone down easier than any first generation fighter of the Galactic Union or the Galactic Federation. They had shown to be very maneuverable and fast, as well as a nice amount of firepower, but they had lacked shields. Maybe they just hadn't shields small enough to fit into a fighter, just like the First Gen fighters of the other galactic races back in their old universe.

"Full Alert," he said." Put the Defense Grit to Full automatic mode. All shield layers to full strength and get me fire solutions to bring down the shield of that ship. And I want a full Jamming in effect."

The computerized fire control system began to analyze the massive amount of information that came from its own sensory system as well as over the tactical information network of the fleet. Within moments, it worked its way through the jungle of information, calculating numerous amounts of fire solutions for the massive Tillmans weapons.

Other computer systems began to analyze the information for the EM, quantum and tachyon emissions of the _Tyrannic_, trying to come up with a useful tactical analysis for the Electronic Warfare systems.

The holographic representation of the _Tyrannic_ flashed red as it fired. The automatic Defense Grid jumped at that data, calculating the flight path of the energy beams as fast as it could and caused the fast moving small emplacements of the ships PP 8 Plasma Mortars that were tied into the _Red Palace_'s Defense Grid to fire at the incoming beams of energy.

Self containing balls of plasma where spat from the Mortars of _Red_ _Palace_ and the other ships and flew at the incoming ion beams and turbo laser fire. The results were mixed. Some of the beams were outright neutralized in a very visible light show of expanding plasma, while others were completely unphased.

The remaining beams of energy slammed into the outer shield layers of the Ferron ships, while others where bend away by the unique Ferron gravitic shielding, failing to hit anything, while the continued to race into interstellar space and dissipate somewhere.

Danna narrowed his eyes as he was presented with a detailed analysis of the still incoming fire. It was impressive, but spread over the entire fleet. If the commander of that ships would have concentrated his fire on one ship of the fleet, he would have managed to destroy one of his Olympus, but like this...

"To all ships, fire at will. Shoot to disable."

With these few words hell was unleashed at the _Tyrannic_ as Plasma Mortars of all grades opened fire. Gravitic weapons were not used as they were sure to kill a ship with a direct hit, turning it into a long narrow cylinder of super dense metal.

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Admiral Sally Ryan snorted back on Shabazza.

"200 Giga tons per shot my ass."

Next to her Vice Admiral Marco Ramsey let his eyes wander towards Sally's rear.

"I didn't know that your rear was rated as Weapon of Planetary Destruction. Remind me to never be near you if you have gas."

Sally turned slightly and glared at him like she could set him on fire with it.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Bishto was cursing inside, but he fought hard to not show it on the outside. The primitives didn't seem to be as primitive as he had thought.

Their weapons were indeed primitive compared to turbo lasers and ion cannons, but they were effective and powerful. And than there was some sort of defensive weapon system that was able to intercept the fire of the _Tyrannic_ as well as the fact that the Ion Cannons didn't have the effect he had hoped for.

He had to hold at the weapons console of his ship as the weapons bolts hit the shields and penetrated them by simply overwhelming the particle and ray shields.

A dual hit that got through the shields shook the bridge even more than all previous as they managed to take out the shield generators left and right of the large superstructure of the ship. Emergency sirens wailed throughout the ship and the damage control crews weren't able to respond as fast as the damage was done.

"Prepare for hyperspace!" he said a little louder than normally, enough to overwhelm the noise on the bridge.

Considering thee situation, Bishto had a self control that was frightening, even his second in command and the rest of the bridge crew had to say as much had they had the time to say it.

By now, devoid of any shields, Tyrannic was getting hit more than before. The bolts from the enemies weapons impacted all over the frontal hull, destroying turbo laser, laser and ion cannon emplacements with nearly pin point accuracy.

The ship shook once again as a massive barrage of the enemy fire flashed by the bridge and the superstructure, impacting behind it, causing the large engines to be crippled and nearly destroyed.

Now several of the bridge crew began to panic more than before.

"WE LOST HYPERSPACE!"

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Major Hotaru von Bismark looked over the about one thousand Marines that were assembled inside the massive cargo hold of the Conquistador class Amphibious Langing/Assault ship _ICS_ _R. Lee Ermy_. She smirked a bit as she let her gaze wander around.

Most of them were outfitted with M244 'Mjolnier' Medium Powered Armor, the standard powered armor for the Marine Corps. Additionally there were a few M129 'PowerSuit' Heavy Powered Armors and K-5 'Guges' Super Heavy Powered Armor scattered around between them. And of course there were a number of Fuchikomas and Tachikomas.

These were hers. But to her shame there were the last of the lot. During the weeks before the Transfer, the 501st Marine Regiment had lost most of their numbers, but it had made the rest come much closer together. She could really say that she was commanding the best jarheads of the entire Marine Corps.

They weren't only humans, they had Ferrons, Dilgar, Nomads and members several other races, not even their commanding officer was fully human and she was proud of it. Not many people could claim to be the first Earth born human-shin'bi hybrid and be the direct descendant of Otto von Bismark.

Hotaru intended to follow the legacy of him as well as that of her mothers people. Small wonder why the 501st preferred type of combat included stealth and guerrilla tactics.

Than she looked to the side, where a pair of Guardians stood. Considering the information she had about the intended target, which happened to a Imperial Star Destroyer, she could understand that. The Guardians were the best Spec Ops the IC had to field and could double as diplomats. In a sense they were 'Spec Ops Jedi' as Brigadier Chavez liked to call them.

"Okay, people," she said out loud, the volume of her organ as well as the tone of her voice silencing every conversation between her Marines." Looks like we got a new job other than babysitting a load of Gaim on a Tree."

She stopped and smiled one of her shit eating grins that was rather dreaded by her Marines, as it normally meant that they would get involved in very intense combat.

"This is our target," she said and send a short command to the cargo holds holographic projector with her Type 2 implants.

The projector activated and the representation of a large Imperial Star Destroyer hovered over the Marines visible for everyone.

There was a long silence before the first of the Marines reacted.

"Ya gotta be kiddin', Boss."

Hotaru chuckled also something dreaded by the Marines.

"I am not," she said her grin a little wider." A Ferron Task Force around the _Red_ _Palace_ encountered the Imperial Star Destroyer _Tyrannic_ and a Lambda shuttle that is currently presumed to belong to the Alliance. The Imperials were intended to fight and lost. So much for the 200 Gigatons."

Chuckles of those knowing Star Wars were heard.

"Take that Warsies," was a rather loud comment from somewhere in the middle of the crowd, that also resulted in the sound of metal hitting metal and a short girly scream.

Hotaru shook her head slightly.

"Our job is to board the Tyrannic and take control over it with as little casualties and damage as possible. The Pentagon wants to have all navigational data they can get their hands on. Any knowledge about the current era would also be a good catch."

Than she laughed out loud.

"Maybe we get to board a Death Star later on."

Screams of 'Yeah' and 'Way to go' echoed through the Cargo Hold and Hotaru leaned over the hand rail.

"Get ready boys, girls and whatevers. We just left slipstream and are ready for a hard lock."

Another wave of cheers went through the room and she stepped back from the handrail and turned to the two Guardians.

"I take it you want to get in first with a group of my heavies to get the bridge?"

The two Guardians nodded and Hotaru activated her com implant.

"Captain Malak, get your Guges ready. You play baby sitter for our Guardians. And take a pair of the Fuchikomas."

"Yes ma'am."

-----------------------------------------------------------

From the shuttle, Kyle and Jan were very much able to take a closer look at the battle between the Ferrons and the _Tyrannic_. At first they had thought that the Imperials would win and they would be able to get away with the Star Destroyer than busy with the remains of the fleet, but now it looked very different.

"I don't know whether to pity the Imperials or hope they get roasted," Jan wondered as the both looked at the sensory display.

"I for one hope they get their rears handed to them," Kyle responded.

Than the fire stopped and both blinked.

"Did we miss the big bang?" Kyle asked as he looked out of the windshield trying to see the light of the distant explosion of a Star Destroyer.

"I think they want her alive."

Both blinked as a new contact appeared out of nowhere without any effect that was typically for a hyperspace exit, next to the Star Destroyer.

The ship moved close to the _Tyrannic_ and turned about to face the dorsal opening of the Imperial vessels large hangar. Than it seemingly melted to the hull.

"Yep, they want her alive."


	5. Chapter 5

Empire

by Warringer

Chapter 4

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Guardian Samuel Maxwell smirked a little as he looked down at his partner, Alexander.

"Read to rock?"

The reptilian face of the about one meter thirty tall member of the Race turned into something that could be called a grin, his large sickle shaped claws clicking on the metal floor of the cargo hold in anticipation. They had just changed the floor for the ceiling as the gravity reversed itself to allow easier boarding.

"Ready to rock and roll," he answered with a short snort.

Sam rolled his neck and stretched slightly as he slowly began to do a last internal checkup of his implants. He knew that Alex was doing pretty much the same as he did.

By now they were partners in crime for the last eight years, with Alex being the senior of the two, with fifteen years of being a Guardian after another fifteen years of being a Marine.

Alex had been born in the same city on Home the BOLO Alexander had saved from a Doranian Cruiser, nearly at the same time as the BOLO and the Cruiser had stopped as a burning mess before the city limits. His patents and most of the other people in the city had seen it as some kind of sign and named him after the one who had died to defend them.

By now Alexander was about fifty earth years old, still in the early quarter of his life as the members of The Race could get as old as two hundred fifty years without any prolong treatment. And becoming a Guardian included getting prolong for your race if you weren't human, as humans just got their ancient genes activated.

Sam on the other hand belonged to the first generation of humans with already activated ancient genes, having been born around 2011. He had, like Alex gone through the Marines before getting into SOLDIER and becoming a Guardian.

Both of them were dressed in the same dark uniform that was commonly seen with Guardians on duty, consisting of a modified K-2 Gasium suit and a kind of armored trench coat. While it looked rather normal on Sam, it looked just plain strange on Alex, who had a mess of his feathers sticking from the neck and the sleeves of the suit. But he couldn't very well go nude, like his kind normally did, their feathers protecting their not really existing modesty.

A squad of Guges Landmates walked up towards them, followed by a pair of Fuchikomas. The chest plate of one Guges opened to show the face of a afro-american woman.

"Captain Anna Malak," she introduced herself." I'm here to keep your ass out of trouble."

Sam and Alex looked at each other for a moment. Sam chuckled while Alex snorted again.

"I got the feeling we are going to keep you out of trouble, Captain," Alex noted dryly.

Malak raised an eyebrow and the massive arm of her Guges pointed at the image of the Star Destroyer that still hovered in the cargo hold.

"We're going to deal with Stormies. How hard can it be?"

"This is real life not a movie."

"Attention!" the massive speakers called out through the cargo hold." We have achieved a hard lock with the Destroyers hangar. Prepare for boarding maneuver."

"Hell yeah, " came from behind them all as the two Guardians and the squad of Heavy Assault Marines, nicknamed 'Terminators' internally, stood at the air lock, ready to go first.

The massive opening of the air lock opened slowly.

Sam grinned as he reached over his shoulder for his trusty, through heavily modified, M41 Pulse Rifle. He was more of the ranged fighter, while Alex preferred to do things close up and personal. As such Alex reached for his belt and grabbed a pair of short cylinders, which happened to be the adopted weapon of the Guardians, a mix of laser sword, plasma gun and collapsible staff.

The pair of cylinders extended slightly forming something that looked like nightsticks, which suited Alex fighting style quite nicely.

The air lock hadn't even half opened as the first blaster fire from Imperial Stormtroopers began to come through, impacting over the entire length of the cargo hold.

Sam grinned a little more, ready to sprint forward and called up his personal shield. Than he saluted towards Captain Malak slightly, who had already closed her chestplate.

"See you on the bridge."

Before Malak could respond he sprinted forward into the fire of the Stormtroopers. Next to him Alex sprinted forwards quite a bit faster, thanks to his ancestry.

"Go sic 'em li'l buddy."

Alex jumped over the last piece of air lock that was in his way and right into the middle of the Stormtroopers. Landing in a crouch, he didn't stop for long before exploding into action, raining blows of his nightsticks and kicks, with added action of his claws down on the surprised Stormtroopers. In less than a second he had ripped a large opening into their lines, while Sam provided precise fire from his M41 to take out any Stormie who tried to take a clear shot at Alex.

Ten second later they were through a just closing air lock of the hangar and on their way towards the bridge of the Star Destroyer.

-----------------------------------------------------------

"Fuck me," Hotaru cursed as she crotched behind a Tachikoma, firing her own M41 at the Stormtroopers that were keeping behind their own barricades." They can actually shoot."

"Not to mention that they are several hundreds of them in the hangar alone," came the voice of her second in command next to her, a young Dilgar, Captain Dar'an." Our dear Guardians made it through them quite fast however."

"And ditched their 'sitters," Hotaru noted dryly.

"They are Guardians, for Fracks sake. They are bound to do something like that."

"Get the Heavies and the 'komas forward!" Hotaru yelled into her com 'plant." And take out those damned turrets."

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Trooper Masik blinked as a black and blue shadow zipped past the next intersection. He hurried up to the intersection and looked into the direction the shadow had went only to be greeted by an empty corridor.

The tapping on his shoulder let him jerk together and turn around fast to come face to face with a smiling man in black clothes a rather large rifle in his hands. The man pointed down the corridor into the direction the shadow had went.

"That way to the bridge?"

Masik blinked again and nodded dumbly.

"Thanks," the unknown man said, his smile becoming wider.

The last thing Masik would remember after that was the fist coming straight towards his face.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Sam shook his hand and cursed silently as he looked down to the felled Stormtrooper. Down the corridor Alex looked around the corner.

"Do I have to wait any longer?"

Sam grumbled something about incredibly hard Stormie armor and kicking someones rear as he sprinted after the Race Guardian.

"Come on," he yelled back." Just asking for the direction."

Alex raised his equivalent of an eyebrow, a slightly feathered eye ridge.

"I thought only human females ask for direction and that you males don't have to because of your superior sense of direction."

Sam frowned slightly.

"Oh laugh it up. You got an idea where the bridge is?"

Alex shook his head slightly and looked around.

"Nope. These corridors look all the same..."

Sam shook his head slightly and Alex looked at him questioning.

"Are we even still on the same deck? And where is everyone?"

Sam shrugged.

"No idea. And I think I just saw tumble weed rolling down one of the other corridors."

Than he looked back at the fallen Stormtrooper and pointed into the opposite direction.

"That'a way."

Sam walked down the corridor, with Alex behind him.

"You'd think that there wouldn't be as many empty corridors on a ship with a crew of several thousand."

"Maybe they are all down at the hangar giving the 501st a hard time?"

Sam looked down at the raptoid.

"Stormies? Hard time? Are we talking about the same here? The way this goes the 501st is at the bridge earlier than we are."

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"Area secure, Boss."

Hotaru breathed in deep and looked around. The hangar deck was littered with unconscious, injured or dead Stormtroopers, while another group had been forced to let go of their weapons and were now forced into the _Ermy_ at gun point.

The bulkheads of the hangar were littered with black marks, dents and holes where a shot from both sides had hit the metal and several very large black spots marked the places where the defense turrets of thr hangar had been.

The TIEs hanging from the ceiling had been reduced to scrap metal during the fight and in some cases had fallen down on either Stormtroopers or Marines. The injured from the falling TIEs were not the only ones however.

The defense coming from the Stormies had been much more effective and powerful than anyone had thought it would be. Everyone who had thought that the Stormtroopers on this ship would be like the pushovers in the movies had been wrong. In fact they were rather well trained using their weapons and their armor.

Speaking of the armor. It seemed to be at least the equivalent of a light power assisted armor like the K-2 Gasium. From the looks of it they had been designed to deflect and weaken any plasma based weapons, like PPCs, as well as resist low to medium caliber projectile weapons. Not that it mattered all that much considering the firepower the Marines could dish out.

"Casualties?"

Dar'an sighed.

"Five fatalities, thirty wounded. On of the PoweredSuit pilot got beneath a TIE and lost the legs of the suit. He'll be in medical for weeks until they grow him a new pair."

Hotaru nodded. A little more than she had suspected, but since they seemed to have underestimated the Stormtroopers it was explainable.

"Okay, set up sentry guns and prepare to open the hangar air locks. I bet that they set up choke holds behind the air locks and the other corridors surrounding the hangar."

Dar'an saluted and nodded.

Hotaru once again looked around. The commander of the Tyrannic had managed to get maybe a thousand Stormtroopers into the hangar to try and defeat her Marines during the initial operation. And those had been able to keep them on their toes for about twenty minutes.

She knew that it was only the beginning. Imperial Star Destroyers were packed with much larger crews than any Galactic ship she knew. And most of the crew happened to be Stormtroopers. The incompetent movie versions would have folded in less than twenty minutes and they would have had the ship by now.

But these Stormtroopers were actually competent, well armed and armored. It would be a hard fight to get them to fold up.

Maybe that could be shortened when the Guardians took the bridge.

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"This is getting really, really creepy..."

Sam looked around. By now he was growing more and more paranoid. He pointed his M41 around any corner they were walking around now and any intersection they crossed.

For the last few minutes, since he had punched out the single 'trooper, they had yet to see any soul, heck droid.

"You think we should split up to look for the bridge?" Alex asked after a while.

Sam looked at him as if he had just decided to grow more feathers at his arms and take up flying under his own power.

"Are you nuts?" he asked and pointed at one of the doors in the bulkheads with his gun." Did you see any of these survival horror movies? Never split up!"

The door chose that moment to open up and an imperial officer stepped out of the door, looking down and fumbling at his crotch, looking like he was trying to close a resistant zipper. Alex and Sam looked at the officer, who was still obvious at them and mumbled something about cheap uniforms and expansive Star Destroyers.

Alex and Sam looked at each other and grinned for a moment. Than Sam shoved his gun under the officers nose and his current line of sight. He stopped and very slowly let go of his still resistant zipper and raised both arms, while his zipper continued to stay open, showing a glimpse of his yellow on green polka dot undies.

Sam just grinned like he had won the lottery.

"Hi," he greeted very cheerfully." I wonder if you could show us to the bridge."

The officer swallowed.

"But only if it doesn't keep you from doing your job..."

The officer very carefully eyed the gun and than the black clad man and the obviously carnivorous reptilian alien next to him, who was showing of his very sharp teeth. Than he swallowed again and started to sweat.

"I was on the way to the bridge anyway," he answered with a coarse voice.

Sam grinned a little more, if that was possible and waved his gun to the side.

"You go first, my dear friend."

By now the officer just wanted to get back into the bathroom and cower in a corner.

"Mommy..."


	6. Chapter 6

Empire

by Warringer

Chapter 5

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"Wait a minute," Hiraku said and held up his hands as he stood up.

He glared at the holographic representation of Admiral Ryan, who was still on Shabazza.

"Run this by me again..."

Ryan had a strange smile on her face as she repeated what she had said.

"Apparently we are a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Sir."

He continued to glare at her. He was the President of the Commonwealth for gods sake, first he had the Galactic War break out, than the Commonwealth essentially being destroyed and had to bug out with Earth and 25 billion people, most of them refugees, into another universe. Now it turned out that this universe was the Star Wars universe? It would do wonders for him trying to run for the office a second time.

"Proof?"

Ryan had a smug look on her face before a display appeared next to her, showing the Star Destroyer which had currently a Conquerer hanging beneath it. There were also the displays of a Lambda class shuttle and the still recognizable wreckage of a TIE.

"We are currently boarding the SD to get any information when we are. Several of our... uhm... Warsies think that we are somewhere in the time line between pre A New Hope to post The Empire Strikes Back."

Hikaru sighed and turned around, walking towards the large windowpane of The Office. He was silent for several moments as he looked over the large floating platform of Atlantis and the smaller towers of the city. Down in the ocean, he could see several of the Subs cruising at the surface, while even further out a glistening string went up into the sky towards a large shadow that was very visible against he light of day, much like the more than ten thousand Dyson Trees that orbited Earth in various orbits.

"So we have possibly worry about a Death Star."

"Not if we manage to keep quiet and keep ourselves out of the whole thing."

There was another silence, that was broken by Merlins voice.

"I fear that is not possible, Ma'am."

Hikaru didn't turn back around.

"What makes you say that?"

Merlin's voice sighed.

"The observer effect, sir. Our presence alone is changing the universe already. If we are really in the Star Wars universe, the sudden appearance of more than 25 billion sources of life energy are bound to send, to paraphrase Obi-Wan Kenobi... 'A disturbance through the force'."

Hikaru frowned and breathed in deep. This could be bad.

"So basically the Emperor can have sensed our arrival."

"That is correct, sir."

He closed his eyes. He had to worry about yet another one with access to Weapons of Planetary Destruction. The dictator of a galactic Empire, the Galactic Empire, this time.

He looked up into the sky towards the large artificial shadow in the sky and the glittering strand going towards it.

There was only one difference to the Shadows and the Vorlons. Right now they had the ability to destroy these WPDs, once and for all, preventing them to be used. Sure the Rebels would be able to destroy both Death Stars, but only after the first one had destroyed a whole planet.

But now that wasn't too sure. While the presence of the Star Destroyer was pretty much by chance, the possibility of Palpatine sensing the appearance of a whole planet through the Force, could get him to investigate and discover a planet he might think was worth conquering or to be destroyed with a Death Star.

He breathed in again. There were too many 'buts'. He needed some useful informations before he could even think of getting the Staff together and make plans.

"Hoo boy," he suddenly heard Ryan say and turned around to look at her." We now know who was in that shuttle. Things are bound to get interesting."

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Admiral Danna crossed his arms on his back as he looked at the holographic projection of the space around the ship. Currently they were all positioned around the large ship High Command had called a 'Star Destroyer'. Shields were activated in case one of the turrets would come back online and shoot. Only when the Marines were in complete control over the ship, they would completely deactivate the shields.

The sound of a door opening behind him caused him to turn around and smile a little at the two very humanoid persons entering the bridge. It was surprising that these two were looking so human. From the way they were sweating and moving sowhat tiredly, they seemed to be used to a similar environment as humans. Ferrons were living under higher gravitation and a higher temperature compared to Earth after all.

One of them was, so it seemed at least, male. He was a little smaller than the humans he was used to, but considering that humans came in more than one size, it wasn't that strange. From what he could tell the man was Caucasian, with a stubble of hair in his face. The other one was an Asian looking woman.

"Admiral Ban Danna," he said and held out his hand in an Earthern custom." Welcome aboard of _Red Palace_."

"Kyle Katarn," the man said and shook the offered hand," my friend Jan Ors."

Danna nodded.

"Sir," he was interrupted before he could say much more." The _Fantômas_ is leaving slipstream. They are ready to tow the 'Star Destroyer' into their docking bay and bring it to Clarke."

Danna turned slightly and nodded towards the technician. He gave a short mental command over his implant towards the bridges computer and the holographic display changed to show the _Fantômas_ moving towards the 'Star Destroyer'.

_ICS Fantômas_ was one of three surviving Hiigara class vessels. It was true that other ships could have towed the Star Destroyer towards Earth, but a Hiigara could get additional troops onto the ship while in transit.

"Good, as soon as the Star Destroyer is docked with the _Fantômas_ we are leaving," he said." I doubt that we are going to find much in the gravitational system of this gas giant that would be of much interest until the _Red_ _Dwarf_ or other miners can make it here."

"Yes, sir."

Danna turned back around and smiled at the two humanoids again.

"The High Command of the Interstellar Commonwealth would like to invite you to come aboard Shabazza," he than said, trying to ignore that both were looking behind him and at the hologram that showed how the large Star Destroyer was loaded into the internal bay of _Fantômas_.

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Alex tapped one of his claws on the deck making a pinging noise as he glared at the Imperial officer in front of him. The officer was sweating bullets and tried to keep his cool as the repiloid glared at him. He was failing through and every little movement of Alex was making him twitch.

Next to both, Sam had put his rifle on his back, and hit the computer that was part of the bulkhead next to the large air lock to the bridge. There was a short scream of pain and a sizzling noise as Alex and the office looked over to him.

"God damn," Sam cursed and glared at the offending and now destroyed computer display.

The display was carved in and sparking. It also quite nicely explained why Sam was cursing and shaking his hand.

He noticed that Alex was looking at him.

"What?"

Alex just shook his head.

"So much for a silent entry..."

Sam gave him a glare and began to let his hands search through the inner pockets of his trench coat like over garment that was part of their uniform.

"Like we really had any chance for that," he shot back." The locked the bridge from the inside and locked everyone out. Including our friend."

The office continued to sweat and looked about ready to crap his pants. Considering that his pants were still open and they had encountered him in front of a toilet, that was going to be difficult.

Sam shook his head again and grabbed one of his nightsticks and poked the officer into his side.

"I know you," he shot back and herded the officer around corner." You always like to make a noisy entry."

Sam grinned like a child that just got his first airsoft gun as he pulled a thin roll of something that liked like thick gray duct tape out of a pocket.

"Oh come on, I'm not that bad."

"You are."

Sam shrugged and began to use the tape to outline a large door on the air lock twice and than pressed his finger into the rather soft material at three places before jumping back and diving behind the corner.

Immediately there after a loud explosion came from around the corner and several rather massive blocks of metal flew down the corridor.

Alex glared at Sam who was laying on the ground.

"You used a double load, didn't you."

It was more of a statement than a question.

"I did, so sue me," Sam answered." I got no idea how thick that airlock was. Could have been thicker."

Alex grumbled something as Sam looked towards the Imperial officer as he got up from the ground.

"Meh, fainted. Weakling."

-----------------------------------------------------------

Hiraku closed his eyes for a moment and breathed in deep. Than he turned back around from the large window pane and looked at Marcus Swanson, his Minister of Defense, and the hologram of Admiral Sally Ryan, the current head of the Space Naval Forces. The other members of the Joint Chiefs were thee in the flesh. Admiral Mirak Dalar of the Wet Naval Forces, General D'Kor of the Army and General Juri Dunokow of the Air Force.

"We remain on DEFCON 2," he declared." We don't know how much our knowledge of the Star Wars Galaxy is consistent with the reality. For all we know they could have send a FTL message to their base and we are about to face an Imperial fleet attacking us. Or worse a Superweapon."

The Joint Chiefs and Swanson nodded.

"I would recommend to put all orbital facilities to Alert State Omega," Swanson noted." From what the technicians of the AODI-5 installations told me, they will need at least a year to fully go over all systems and repair them. The Transfer took more out of them than we thought it would. And it seems as if the AODI-4, the Mk III GODs and the remaining Victories and Ancients were damaged by some sort of Quantum Interferrence from the transfer. It seems that the projectors of all Quantum based weapons need to be adapted to this universes quantum physics."

Ryan raised an eyebrow.

"Slipstream and shields seem to work," she noted.

"But they are not using principles that pretty much bend the rules as much as the Quantum weapons."

Hikaru looked surprised.

"I didn't knew that you where Quantum Physichist."

Swanson chuckles a little.

"I'm not, but that was the answer I got when I asked the same question."

Hikaru nodded again.

"What about the _Tyrannic_? When is _Fantômas_ going to deliver her to Clarke?"

"About an hour, sir," Ryan answered." The 501st is currently mopping up the last Stormies after the Guardians have taken the bridge of the ship."

"Good."

"I also asked if the _Fantômas_ could get there faster."

Everyone looked at Ryan with a questioning look on their faces. Ryan sighed in annoyance.

"People from the TIT and the TNI are snooping around here and bugging everyone if they couldn't get on that SD earlier. It's annoying..."

That got a chuckle out of everyone. Hikaru shook his head with a smile.

"Next thing," he said." How are we going to approach the Rebel Alliance?"

"We should try to not get too much involved with them," surprisingly came from Dunokow." The Alliance is going to win and we should make sure they do, but the New Republic makes the old UN look like a kindergarten in comparasion. Like the Old Republic and the Empire they are lacking a clear competitor as a nation. They may be a democratic government, but they are going to be very ineffective."

By now he noticed that everyone pretty much stared at him.

"I am a fan of Star Wars and the novels of Timopthy Zann," he clearified with a shrug.

Hikaru chuckles a little.

"In that case, do you have any more suggestions?"

Dunokow nodded.

"We should take a look into Uncharted Space as soon as possible. We chould get into contact with the Chiss and maybe Grand Admiral Thrawn. Thrawn might be an Imperial, but he is a brilliant head and a good man. I'd rather have him on our side."


	7. Chapter 7

Empire

by Warringer

Chapter 6

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Arthur Charles Clarke was a truly massive structure. Hovering about 36.000 kilometers above the cross of the Greenwich Meridian and the Equator, it was the orbital base of several hundred monomolecular carbon threads that connected it to a massive base station down on Earth allowing several dozen climbers to move between the surface of the planet and the massive station.

To counter the massive angular momentum on the threads the station was held stationary by massive Ferron counter gravity generators that were powered by by the Hawking Reactors that also powered the entire structure together with the normal fusion reactors.

But Clarke wasn't a simple counter station for a space elevator. It had never bee intended to be since it started out as ten kilometer asteroid in 2010. Ferron and EA derivate systems had broken the asteroid down and used its material to build the first parts of the giant structure it would eventually become. And the massive autonomous robotic Von Neumann factories were still continuing to expand the massive structure.

Clarke was far from finished. It was still only the base structure with three arms extending from it. The Base structure was a large cylindric structure with a diameter of two hundred kilometers and a hight of fifty kilometers. It also had a large fifty kilometer diameter half-spherical indention in its middle, where some of the Von Neumann factories were breaking down a large forty kilometer asteroid to either replicate themselves or send towards the other factories that build the massive arms of the station. The Asteroid wouldn't last longer than maybe two month until the factories had broken it down and used its materials for construction.

Two of the large arms were extending along the geostationary orbit of Clarke. With a length of one thousand kilometers extending from the base structure, the curve of the arms along the orbit was already noticeable. Each of the arms was based around a rectangular form with twenty kilometers length and five kilometers height.

The last arm was extending towards Earth, although it was less long as the orbital arms. Only extending five hundred kilometers towards Earth, the ten by ten kilometers structure had to be hollow to allow the threads of the space elevators to pass through. It would needs some time until it would meet with the similar structure build up from Earth, creating a large tower like structure from Earth towards the orbit.

Most of the contents of the structure were industrial complexes that also helped to build itself, but also everything from every day articles to space ships. It also has large areas for people living aboard and hydroponic and other installations to feed the people living here. And there was the large decentralized Artificial Intelligence that was the heart of the structure, Arthur.

It was also essential parts of the planets defense. Massive shielding generators protected itself and parts of the planet, while offensive systems where lined along the arms, massive retractable turrets of GODs, GLIPAs, MACs as well as Launch arrays ready to defend the planet.

But Arthur Charles Clarke wasn't the only structure that was build like this. Two other structures, Robert Anson Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, were build 120 degrees into each direction along the geostationary orbit, each more or less fast by building themselves. Eventually all three would come into contact with each other, connecting the orbital arms, creating a massive ring around Earth, connected to its planet with three orbital towers.

But right now massive Warlock sized autonomous factories were still building the structures as the weapons were deployed and ready to fire at any aggressor. And they would continue to build it for the next about six decades.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Kyle couldn't help but stare at the structure that floated in the center of the incredibly clear holographic projection that was floating in the center of _Red_ _Palace_'s bridge. Sure, he had seen the Kuat Drive Yards and Center Point Station, but this structure was something else, somehow.

He couldn't quite explain it, but he had the feeling that it would be much larger than KDY. And than there where the large green objects floating around the structure and just about everywhere else.

"Is that out destination?"

Admiral Danna looked up from where he talked to one of his subordinates and shook his head, as slight smile on his face.

"No, we are not going to Clarke. High Command is on Shabazza, one of the Solar Trees."

"Solar Trees?" Jen asked from next to Kyle. Like him she was sowhat overwhelmed by what she had seen until now. Earlier she had told him that there was no way that they were still in the same system as there wasn't any planet that could support life on its own.

"Dyson Trees," Danna noted." Essentially they are giant trees that grow on comets. Space born intelligent life forms. The Ancients created them to act as self governing space stations. They are members of the Commonwealth."

-----------------------------------------------------------

Tenchi Masaki was worried. It wasn't simply because of the transfer or that the transfer had stranded them in the Star Wars universe. No. He was more worried about his ship, his crew and his family. Over the last few decades the three women that were now laying in the medbeds of the Medbay had become more of a family than the people he used to call his family.

It was partly his fault through that his old family had become strangers to him. But the time he had lived in the Earth Alliance universe had changed him from the boy into the man he was now. And the following decades after his return had changed him more than the time in the EA universe.

And that was also the fault of his old extended family, especially the Emperor who had tried to force him to act against the thing he believed in.

Now he had to face the possibility that he would loose his new adopted family to the petty fight between two races that dared to call themselves First Ones and acted like spoiled brats.

He closed his eyes for a moment. He just hoped that _Dark_ _Knight_ would adapt to the now stronger telepathic ability of Setsuna. She was already growing neural tissue in several unused areas of the ship as reaction to her bond to the greenheaded ex-Psicop.

Ever since they had made the transfer, Setsuna was in a form of coma as her brain tried to shut out the large amounts of thoughts she sensed and was unable to block out. _Dark_ _Knight_ was bonded to Setsuna and acted as something of a filter, helping her to block out the thoughts and keeping her sane. But now _Dark_ _Knight_ didn't have the power to block out the thoughts of more and more people and fell into the same form of coma. Her two Avatars, D and K were the same. He was only glad that he only had a headache.

"Bridge to Admiral Masaki," the voice of Setsuna's current replacement, until she was back on her feet, came over the PA.

"What is it Commander?"

"We get some..."

The voice of the Commander suddenly was covered by a high hitched noise that came directly over the ships PA. It sounded like an injured animal. At the same time the light began to flicker and the gravity to fluctuate.

Tenchi was thrown off his feet as the ship made a sudden movement without adequately working compensators. Than there were three inhuman human screams coming from the medbeds and Tenchi looked up from where he was holding to one of the beds, that were fastened to the deck.

Setsuna and the two avatars where all but buckling in their beds and against the straps that held them down just in case, eyes wide open and with a nearly insane look in each of them.

This was the moment as a hot knife seemed to slice into his head. He collapsed onto his knees and floded over as he held his head.

For a moment it was as if he was feeling the thoughts of several thousand people screaming in his head only to be stop abruptly.

As sudden as the pain had come it was gone and with it gone, the light and gravity came back. His head hurting like hundreds of dwarfs trying to mine ore from it, he looked up. Setsuna and the two avatars were still screaming, but the screams died down before they collapsed back into their medbeds, falling limb.

Tenchi breathed in deep as he stumbled back to his feet and towards one of the med cabinets to look for something that could at least dull down that massive headache.

At the same time his mind tried to come up with an explanation for what had just happened. He was just about to swallow a number of Aspirin dry as a single quote came to his mind.

"As if millions of voices suddenly cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced," he said out loud a look of horror on his face.

His stomach seemed to twist itself into a ball. This had to be how Sestuna felt when they witnessed the destruction of Home by the hands of the Vorlons.

"Admiral, are you there?" the voice of the Commander called out again over the PA.

"I'm here," he said and swallowed." High Priority message to Admiral Ryan. Alderaan has just been destroyed by the Death Star..."

-----------------------------------------------------------

"Be careful with that!" came the rather loud shout from one of the technicians that were milling around on the bridge of the Imperial Star Destroyer Tyrannic.

Captain Tanner Bishto grit his teeth as he was forced to watch how the unknowns were falling over his ship like locusts.

"Rebel scum," he pressed out between his teeth as he had to watch how the technicians of the unknowns moved some sort of tank on a repulsor sled onto the bridge.

What else could they be? They had to be Rebels. Rebels that were hiding out in the unknown regions and had managed to get unknown aliens to help them. But they would never win.

Bad enough that they had managed to board his ship and than had pulled it into some sort of massive transport. But now they were daring to take his ship apart while they were still on it.

"Rebels?" he heard one of his guards say." I guess that is not too far from the reality."

The repulsor sled stopped in front of the defense station console. The cover had been removed and a number of technicians were frowning at it.

"Here goes nothing," Bishto heard one of them say." We need to force a hardware connection."

"My kingdom for an R2-unit," said another.

Bishto grit his teeth as he watched the technicians getting into the interior of the console attaching a multitude of different cables and other connectors to the various systems.

A few moments later they stepped back.

"Lets get The Brain to work," one of the technicians said and walked to the console on the side of the tank.

Bishto wondered what the tank was about to do as a small holographic projection appeared next to the tank and a blue glow began to shine from inside of the tank, casting strange shadows all over the surrounding space. He thought that some of the wired blue glow shined through the bodies of the technicians, but he brushed it of as being a result of the stress.

"What is that?" Bishto tried and asked his guard. He might be a prisoner, but he still could ask. Maybe it was useful when he got back to his base, after they had send a fleet after him to take a look.

One of the technicians chuckled.

"Oh, just wringing out every last piece of data from your computer banks."

The technician was about to pat the tank, but pulled his hand back before it could touch the tank. Bishto could have sworn that the wired blue glow had shone through the hand.

"The Brain is able to get into any computer. Even those that we don't even know the architecture and protocols of."

Than he grinned.

"Gotta love quantum computers."

Bishto was about to say something as he noted something outside of the bridge. The hangar of the massive unknown ship had opened again and the tractor beams where pushing his ship out of it.

He looked out of the window to his side and stared out into open space. There was a blue-green-white planet not far from them, but what caught his glance was a massive gray shimmering wall that stretched to either side of his field of view, through he could see a larger object somewhere down along one of the walls.

In the center of his field of view was a massive opening of a hangar and they were moving closer. Space made it hard to tell dimensions, but he saw several large turrets that looked very much like turbolaser turrets on a planet, but they appeared to be much larger.

A reflex from above caught his attention. A large reddish object, looking like an unholy amalgam of different structures slowly drifted across the large wall. Dozens of large tentacle-like structures, each as long as the object and split down in even more tentacles, were moving about through space, several of them carrying massive plates and other parts.

At first Bishto thought of it to be small, but that he saw how the shadow glided over the massive wall and disappeared into the hangar for but a second as it drifted past, showing that the object was at least as large as the opening of the hangar. And the hangar was large enough to 'swallow' an Imperial class Star Destroyer.

Bishto swallowed as he stared after it with large eyes.


	8. Chapter 8

Empire

by Warringer

Chapter 7

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Hikaru von Bismark, President of the Interstellar Commonwealth, leaned back and closed his eyes for a moment. One again they were in a planning session about what to do now.

The only difference between the ones they had every hour since the transfer, this one was able to draw on actual information about where they were and especially when they were.

As he opened his eyes, he nodded at an aide who placed a tablet with sandwiches and a new can of coffee on the table. He sighed as he reached out for the can to refill his cup, before grabbing a sandwich.

"What did The Brain say," he asked John Patric Ryan junior, who was the current head of the Commonwealth Intelligence Agency, and bit down on the sandwich.

John sighed and took a sip of his coffee and looked down on the stack of papers in front of him.

"The Brain got us any data we needed," he said with a certain amount of pride.

The Brain had been his idea, through the actual design was one of the many TIT designs that were in use anywhere in the Commonwealth.

Essentially it was a vastly powerful quantum computer running a highly chaotic software to bombard any unknown computer or AI system with access codes trying to get entrance by sheer chance. Once The Brain was able to get a hardware access to continued to bombard the computer to force a connection. With the connection The Brain began to search for any command that was possible and filed down the responses of the computer.

Commonly The Brain needed at max two days to force access to any file on any, even completely unknown computer and get its secrets from it.

"And it needed less than three hours," he continued with a chuckle.

Hikaru raised an eyebrow and swallowed his bite.

"So we got all files already?"

John nodded.

"Yes. The Navigational informations are currently at Sandhurst to be translated into a star chart that we can use. We are currently working through our share of the informations."

He sighed.

"But it was Admiral Masaki who got us the main information about the 'when'," he said with a slight frown and looked at the clock standing in a corner." Just four hours ago, the first Death Star destroyed Alderaan and send a certain tremor through the force. But it seems that _Dark_ _Knight_, her avatars and Setsuna were able to sense the thoughts of the dying people on Alderaan with such a force that even Admiral Masaki was able to sense it through his connection with his ship."

All other people around the table stared at John and Hikaru slowly placed his sandwich on the table and took a long sip of his coffee, closing his eyes to think for a moment.

For all he knew Palpatine could have already ordered the Death Star to investigate the 'tremor in the force' the transit of Eath had most likely caused.

He placed the cup on the table and looked straight at John.

"What about the psychological profile of Palpatine I asked you about. Were the Profilers able to take an educated guess?"

John sighed again and massaged the bridge of his nose.

"It very likely that he will first investigate us, if he sensed the transit, with a scout and than send in a larger force, maybe the Death Star. First he want to have the galaxy cower in fear and show them that its useless to rebel."

There was a short pause.

"He will go for Yavin IV before using the Death Star on any other target."

Hikaru nodded and leaned back again, the sandwich forgotten for the moment. He glanced over to Michael, the slightly twitchy member of The Race who happened to be the technological advisor of the President, a very capable engineer who had gone through the TIT and especially the Dooms Day Squad of insanes.

"Anything about the Empires capabilities on the military sector?"

The raptoid licked his lips for a moment, before looking at Hikaru, his tail twitching slightly.

"We can scratch the 200 Gigatons for once, Sir," he noted with a little satisfaction. Considering that Michael was a Trekker, it was not too surprising. It also caused some of the Star Wars fans among his staff and the Joint Chiefs to groan a little.

"We can rate the turbolasers of the Imperium I class SDs to be the equivalent to our heavy plasma bolters, through we still need to find out what they really are. The DDS thinks that we are looking for some form of coherent particle or coherent plasma weapon.

"Their Ion Cannons are more a form of EM weapon, firing a directed stream of ionized particles that contain a massive charge and knock out any unshielded system. It also has a very bad influence on out type of shielding, worse than any Minbari EM weapon."

This got a few nods from all around.

"Than we have the defensive capabilities. For one the shields. We know that they got particle and ray shielding, two specialized forms of shielding. Because of that specialization, any particle or ray shield generator is about twice as powerful as a pure quantum shielding generator of the same size. But there are the limitations of that system of shielding however that causes the shield to work both ways.

"Armor wise they are better than anything we know from our universe, but less good than the Commonwealth. Considering the weakness of their shields they managed to come up with a very effective armor. The DDS thinks that we are dealing with the equivalent of the Carbonat III armor. The _Tyrannic_ got at least five meters of that armor.

"They are lacking dedicated Point Defense however and use their light anti-capital lasers and turbolasers against fighters.

"Bottomline is that an ISD can take on a Lupo with a fifty-fifty chance of winning and are to be rated as Cruiser."

Hikaru nodded. He knew that a well trained crew in a Cruiser could be worth any Battle Cruiser. And the Empire had thousands of ISDs and the Commonwealth had only about a thousand ships of Cruiser size and above. Everything else was smaller.

"Now we need to deal with the Death Star," he said after sighing again." There is no way of knowing if the Rebel Alliance really manages to destroy it. For all we know it could go horribly wrong."

-----------------------------------------------------------

"You need HOW many fighters to do WHAT WHERE?"

Admiral Ryan wasn't able to exactly say who had asked that question, but considering the plan, it was very understandable.

"I want half of our fighter, bomber and interceptor squadrons, twice as many Space Jets and assorted small craft, all our carriers, all our AEGIS vessels and all Von Braun's to attack the First Death Star at Yavin IV. And I want them to carry as many Ghostrider Pods as possible."

Repeating her words only caused the remaining Admirals of the Fleet to fall back into the surprised mute shock they had been in earlier.

"The Death Star?" one of the Admirals asked again and Ryan nodded.

Even more than seven decades after the first release of the Star Wars movies, they had retained a good backing of fans and just about everyone on Earth and a good part of the members of the Commonwealth knew what the Death Star was. That the Dooms Days Squad at the TIT still tried to figure out how to get the Deparment of Defense to build one.

Everyone remembered seeing the Death Star one-shoting a planet, something even the Vorlons needed several of their Planet destroyers to do.

Ryan knew that something like the Death Star build with the technology of the Commonwealth would be possible and much more deadly than the one they were about to face. But on the other hand it would waste a massive amount of resources the DoD was not willing to pay. Especially if they could get a large fleet of Warlocks and Victories for the same prize tag and be able to split them up.

The DDS still tried to go the 'forward resupply base' route, but that was futile since the Hiigaras were already deployed in that role.

"Why?"

"The Death Star already destroyed Alderaan, Yavin IV might be the next because of our mere presence and Earth could be the next on the schedule. Besides its an order of the President."

Again the briefing room descended into silence.

"What is the plan?"

Ryan smirked a little.

"Reinforcing the Rebels at Yavin IV and get into the fray when the Death Star arrives. The opening salvos would be the entire load of the Ghostriders and the Von Braun's missiles, aimed at the focusing array of the Superlaser.

"Than the fighters and small craft make sure to bomb the surface installations and get Rouge Squadron the time to drop their load into the ventilation shaft. But maybe we are lucky and get a chain reaction between the Superlaser and the reactor, blowing the whole thing up."

"It has to have shields," Ramsey noted dryly from where he was sitting, not as shocked into silence as the rest of the commanding officers of the Fleet." How about those."

"The spooks of TNI think that Tarkin is not going to activate the shields until the very last moment. That puppy got a shield the strength of a planetary shield."

There were a few nods.

"How about adding the Kushans and Rattlesnakes? They are snipers and should be able to fire from bejond the Death Stars capital engagement range."

"Fallback plan," Ryan noted." They remain here at Earth in case Palpatine is going to send the Death Star our way."

"That would be bad..."

Ryan rolled her eyes.

"Thank you, Admiral Obvious..."

Admiral Andreas Obvious, Commander of the 25th Task Fleet just grinned.

-----------------------------------------------------------

This had to be one of the strangest missions Lieutenant Commander Marvin Dridan had ever flown.

He breathed in deep and licked his lips as he stared out into the strange nothingness that was Slipstream. Slowly his glance drifted down upon the displays in front of him and checked the informations he got from them.

His breathing and the low rumble of the Slipstream drive were the only things he heard and preferred to hear while he speed through slipstream at more than four million times the speed of light.

The silence and the nothingness outside were great if you wanted to think. In a way it was very much like a Zen meditation.

He closed his eyes for a moment, preparing for the last minute of slipstream before he was about to fall back into normal space, just outside the orbit of a planet called Alderaan. He didn't really know how to take it, but it seemed that Earth had dropped in the Wild Space area of the Mid Rima few thousand lightyears away from Zonama Sekot.

It was a bit ironic that they had fled one galactic war only to drop by in the beginning stages of another galactic war. And now he had been ordered to scout out the Alderaan system, trying to determine if the Death Star was still there and how many time the Pentagon had to call together a large attack force to send towards Javin.

He glanced at the timer. Ten seconds until he left slipstream then it was time to step on it and get as fast as possible, and being the pilot of an SR-171B, he could get very close to light speed.

A red light flashed up and not a moment later the nothingness of slipstream was exchanged with the star scape of the Galaxy Far Far Away. While he pushed the throttle up to the maximum, he glanced out into space, noting that the light of the galaxies core was very good to see from here.

He flipped a switch and the sophisticated sensory equipment of his plane went to work. Not even a moment later he could see a massive metallic object exactly in his course vector and nudged the sidestick to the left for a moment, enough that his Blackbird would pass it in a distance of little more than thousand kilometers and get very good reading of the powerful sensors.

The sensors where so advanced that the people back on Earth could tell any surface structure of the Death Star down to ten meters. But he knew that Professor Habuki and Skunk Works had worked on the design of this plane and its systems, so it was not surprising that the sensors were so powerful.

In front of him he could literally see how the icon representing the Death Star grew on his HUD before he passed it at more than .5c.

Even if they had seen him it was very unlikely that they could do anything against him.

Time for a second pass, he thought and pushed his planet into a curve of several million kilometers diameter and pushed for the Death Star a second time.

As he passed the massive Weapon of Planetary Destruction a second time he chuckled a little as he noted a small object lighting up on his board that speed away from the Station at high speed, through not nearly as fast as his Blackbird.

Grinning he flipped a second switch and targeted the small object that could only be the _Millennium Falcon_ and set of a focused radio message on a Rebel frequency, encoded and encrypted by Kyle Kartan, telling the Rebellion that they would get some help to destroy the Death Star.

He chuckled a little more. It seemed that the _Millennium Falcon_ used to be the fastest ship in the galaxy. Now that title belonged to the SR-171 Blackbird II and the Bahamut class.

Than he nodded to himself and with a few hand movements ordered the navigation system to calculate the course home and angled his Blackbird into the direction indicated and activated his Slipstream system again.

The entire operation had only lasted ten minutes of doing two flybys of the Death Star and taking as many readings a possible, while leaving the Imperials wondering what the hell was going on.


	9. Chapter 9

Empire

by Warringer

Chapter 8

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"_Pegasus _Control, this is JR Lead. VFA-103 requesting permission for landing."

"Roger that, JR Lead," came a female voice in response," You are cleared for landing in the Port Pylon. Be advised that the 124th Fighter Squadron of the Earth Air National Guard is currently on que for landing procedures."

Commander Richard 'Skywalker' Hunter frowned a little as he slowly nodded to himself.

"Acknowledged, _Pegasus_. The Jolly Rogers are moving to approach position until the landing que is cleared for us. JR Lead Out."

"Acknowledged, JR Lead. _Pegasus_ Control out."

Slowly he nudged his F-19 Hellcat II into a slow curve, bringing the fighter around the massive bulk of the Mercury class Command Carrier, before turning to the left and the right, where the other members of his squadron had fallen into formation.

Around them space was filled with all kinds of fighters, Space Jets and other small craft that were transferred from either Earth or any IC vessel that wasn't a dedicated carrier. Like the VFA-103 'Jolly Rogers', were transfered from the _Enterprise_ to the _Pegasus_ for the duration of an operation no one knew anything about.

They had just completed a transfer from their old universe into this one and they were already headed to a massive operation.

His thumb slightly moved the small trackball in his side stick, scrolling through the numerous menus of the Hellcats Operating System. A click with the other thumb on a button on the second flight stick chose the advanced statistical display of the Hellcats sensory system, combined with the information that came from the tactical network.

What ever the operation was, he couldn't see any ships besides carriers, Von Brauns and Nadesicos. For a moment he wondered just what they were about to do with nearly half the carrier force of the remaining fleet.

"Hey, Skywalker," he head the voice of Lieutenant Hikari 'Jello' Ichijyo, his wingman, or rather wingwoman." We really have to wait for the Air Heads to land first?"

Hunter snorted as he glanced over to the fighter of his wingman.

"I'm rather not on the receiving end of a Gunslinger," he noted dryly." And you know what the Air Heads think of us."

"True..."

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Bernhard Meiler glanced at the large numbers of Ghostraider Pods his tug was pulling towards _Pegasus_, one of the carriers that hung in space not far from Asimov.

There were already several dozen pods hanging between the two pylons of the carrier and he was about to unload another dozen of Pods.

Glancing over towards other tugs, he noted that there were hundred, if not thousands of Pods being loaded and attached to the outside of any carrier and even the Nadesicos and Von Brauns.

Where ever they were about to go with this fleet. Whoever they were going to fight. They would end up being on the receiving end of one hell of a lot of missiles.

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"Captain, we have finished reloading the stores."

Captain Sergej Dubankov nodded.

"Good," he noted." Anything else?"

"The _Pallas_ has docked with us and is supplying us with 300 additional MGM-60 and ten Pluto Pods."

Dubankov grinned. He loved to be the commander of a Von Braun. Especially at times like these. He would end up with 1800 MGM-60 and numerous Pods to fire. And his _Oberth_ would unload her entire storage in less than five minutes in thirty salvos.

It payed to be a Russian on a Von Braun...

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"WHAT?"

Princess Leia Organa all but stared at the dynamic droid duo. Her stares switched between the gold protocol druid and the smaller blue on white astromech droid.

C-3PO seemed to fidget as he looked down upon his partner.

"What?" he repeated the Princess they had just rescued, not sure what he should take what he had just translated rather automatically without thinking about it.

A series of whistles and beeps was the response as R2-D2 turned his head to look at the Princess.

"What is 'Blue shifted'?" he asked and was once again answered by a series of tones that were binary.

3PO stopped for a moment before slowly turning towards the Princess.

"R2 says that the message was blue shifted from a vessel moving at half the speed of light so that it would end up on a Rebel Frequency."

The Princess stepped back and dropped down on the bench. Next to her Luke Skywalker who was still devastated by the death of Ben Kenobi. At the moment she didn't really care that he was listening in. He would likely end up being part of the Rebellion anyway.

"And?"

R2 responded again and for a moment 3PO looked at him and than at Leia.

"It seems that the message was encoded by Kyle Katarn," he said.

Leia frowned slightly at the mention of Katarn but nodded.

"He has found some allies for the Alliance while he and his partner were fleeing fro a Star Destroyer in Wild Space. They call themselves 'Interstellar Commonwealth' and are sending us a fleet to help destroy the Death Star."

Leia blinked and stared at the dynamic droid duo for a second time.

"Does the message say how to contact this 'Commonwealth'?"

R2 said something and 3PO looked at him for a longer time.

"Should I really say that?" he asked and got another series of beeps and whistles that sounded annoyed.

"I quote," 3PO noted after a pause a human had used to breathe in deep."Don't call us. We call you."

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Everywhere on Earth and the surrounding space all TV and holo channels switched from whatever program they were playing to a rather plain 2 dimensional screen showing the flag of the Interstellar Commonwealth.

"Ladies, Gentlemen and Gentlebeings, the President of the Interstellar Commonwealth," a voice announced using English the lingua franca of the Commonwealth.

The screen switched to show Hikaru von Bismark sitting in his office in front of the massive armored window that showed the Atlantic Ocean and part of the artificial island that was the planet bound base for the Clarke Orbital Lift. Left and right of him were the flags of the Commonwealth and the Terran Confederation.

"Ladies, Gentlemen, Gentlebeings," he began and grossed his hand in front of him as he placed them on his desk." Earth has just narrowly avoided to be destroyed by the Enemy that had destroyed all habitated worlds of the Interstellar Commonwealth. An enemy that wished to destroy everything the Interstellar Commonwealth stood for, going as far as destroying civilian ships of those who were able to flee the destruction of their homeworld.

"This planet, it's sole moon and anything within its magnetosphere had been transferred through Third Space into another reality. Giving us all a chance for a new beginning in a new world, without the constant thread of First Ones trying to prove that they are right.

"More than twenty billion sentients of all member races of the Commonwealth and a good number of our allies have been able to make the transit, most of them currently residing on Earth, the Moon, one of the thousands of Solar Trees or the more than one million civilian ships.

"Maybe one day our descendants will be able to return to our old reality and fight the Enemy. Maybe the light of the Interstellar Commonwealth will stop the war that will most likely rage in our old home for decades, centuries or even millennia. We don't know.

"But we have a new chance to build up the Commonwealth and fight for what we believe is true.

"And even if it pains me to tell you all this..."

He made a pause and looked straight into the camera and seemingly into the eyes of everyone watching.

"We will be forced to fight.

"I know that you do not want to fight anymore, but we have to. Once again we have to stand against an entire galaxy. Once again we have to fight great odds. But once again we are going to be victorious, like we have been during the Doranian War, the Third Space Invasion and the Reunification Conflict.

"We are not facing an enemy who is all but invincible like the First Ones.

"We are facing someone who is just as human... Just as failable... Just as mortal as we all are..."

Again he made a pause and closed his eyes for a moment sighing. As he opened his eyes again, he looked back at the camera and into the eyes of everyone watching.

"I have been forced to make a decision since our scientists were able to tell where we are.

"As we speak, a fleet is on its way to announce our existence to the enemy we have to face in our new home.

"But at the same time, several explorers are beginning to survey the nearby systems to find worlds that are either habitable or can be terraformed for colonization."

He paused and drew in a deep breath.

"We will prevail and we will make this universe our new home.

"A good day to you, Ladies, Gentlemen and Gentlebeings."

-----------------------------------------------------------

Commander Hunter raised an eyebrow as he sat in one of the overfilled pilot briefing rooms of the _Pegasus_ and looked at the three dimensional hologram of the commanding officer of the whole fleet.

He knew that things seemed to be rather desperate, if the Pentagon had ordered her to lead the fleet for whatever operation they were about to fly.

Just fifteen minutes earlier, the fleet had left Earth orbit and was moving away from the planet before entering slipstream and go towards whatever target they were to fight. They had all heard the speech the President had given and it had caused Hunter to try and find out where they had transferred to if Atlantis already knew where they were and this enemy.

Now he knew that he would get if from the woman in the hologram, dressed in the normal khaki colored uniform of a simple officer, not the uniform most were expecting on a Vice Admiral. Neither weren't most people expecting that silver colored cat sized dragon being draped over her shoulders. It was a Zataiku Kinhiryuu, one of the animals from the Shin'bi homeworlds that had found a very large... 'fanbase' one might say.

Vice Admiral Usagi Chiba, nicknamed 'Lady Harrington' or 'The Lady', stood in the holographic projection, her hands crossed on her back as he looked at the assembled fighter pilots, much like she did from similar projections everywhere in the fleet.

The Lady was an oddity in the fleet, mainly because she was a high-level born Technomage, who was a IC Navy officer with her soul. Rumors said that it all started with the 'Honor Harrington' novels and that she had earned her nicknames because of her near-obsession with them, while she was in Sandhurst.

"Ladies, Gentlemen," she began in a matter of fact tone that was typical for her and paused for a moment.

Hunter had been under her command during the time he was still a nugget on the old Serenity. Her style of command was rather down to Earth, through her near obsession with 'Honor Harrington' showed in it.

"I know that all of you are wondering where we are. And what our job is, not even two days after the Transfer."

She paused again and many murmurs were heard throughout the briefing room.

"The 'where' is easy to explain," she said and another hologram appeared next to her." We are in the Star Wars Galaxy."

The room descended into stunned silence as all stared at the other hologram, where they could see live footage from one of Clark's hangars and a damaged Star Destroyer inside of it.

"This is the Imperial Star Destroyer _Tyrannic_," The Lady continued." _Red_ _Palace_ and her Task Force encountered while scouting out one of the gas giants in this system. She was hunting down a Lambda class shuttle with two Rebels aboard and was brought down by the _Red_ _Palace_ Task Force in a short, rather one sided fight. At the moment the eggheads of the TIT are going over the _Tyrannic_ and try to find out what makes her tick."

"Which brings me to the primary objective of Operation 'Wake Up Call'."

The second hologram disappeared for a moment, while The Lady continued to speak.

"We were able to pin point the moment of our transfer to the beginning of Episode IV."

The second hologram appeared and caused gasps all around and Hunter swallowed as he stared at footage of a Real Life Death Star.

"Our primary objective," Admiral Chiba stated with a slight frown.

"But the Rebels are going to destroy it anyway..." came from somewhere in the fleet and The Lady shook her head.

"Nathan thinks that our mere existence in this universe, as well as the presumed tremor in the Force that our arrival caused, are responsible for larger changes in the time line compared to what we know."

She breathed in deep and Hunter sunk back into his seat, closing his eyes for a moment.

"That includes the possibility of the Rebels not being able to destroy the Death Star. We are going to make sure that the Death Star is going to be destroyed and not used against Earth."

This caused gasps and murmurs all around for a second time. It had hit a nerve. Hunter looked around and could see quite a few face of colonials or non-humans who were near tears as they were reminded of the demise of their homeworlds.

"I think everyone knows what to do, once we have reached Yavin IV. The squadron commanders are going to be briefed separately in twenty minutes."

She looked around again and nodded.

"Dismissed."


	10. Chapter 10

Empire

by Warringer

Chapter 9

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Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Vader was kneeling in the empty communication chamber of his current post, being the not all that willing right hand of Great Moff Wilhuff Tarkin aboard the Death Star. However empty was relative as there was a flickering blue-green hologram looking down at him.

"You may raise, my apprentice," his Master said, his eyes looking at him.

"Yes, my lord," Vader said as he slowly rose from the ground where he was kneeling.

"You have felt the disturbance in the force before the destruction of Alderaan," Palpatine said, more a statement than a question.

"Yes, my lord."

The scarred, old face of the Emperor twisted into a mockery of a smile and he chuckled slightly.

"Good," he said and nodded." You will leave the Death Star and Tarkin now. Take your guard and take command over the _Executor_. Tarkin can deal with the Rebels on his own."

Beneath his mask Vader blinked. Before this, his Master had wanted him to make sure that no rebel would get away if the Death Star might fail, but it seemed that the destruction of Alderaan or maybe the strange disturbance in the Force had changed that. Through he had the feeling that it was indeed the disturbance he had felt before Alderaan.

Vader nodded after a moment.

"I am to investigate the disturbance," he stated and caused his Master to glare at him for a moment.

"Yes. Whatever it was that caused the disturbance, I want to know what it is and than I want to have it."

That sounded about right. And he was curious himself. Whatever it was, he had to fight down several urges lately he had thought he would have had under perfect control.

He nodded again.

"Yes, my lord. I will leave the Death Star immediately."

"Good."

With that the hologram disappeared from the chamber and Vader was left alone with his thoughts.

Into this a vision came down upon him. A man in a strange khaki colored uniform with several unknown patches and rank marking stood in front of him, smirking a slightly superior smile. On his head he was wearing a strange blue colored cap with an unknown symbol on it ans an ancient script Vader had last seen in the Jedi Temple.

The script said 'Wolf Pack' in front of the silhouette of three unknown ships, they had to be ships by the way they were positioned. And than there was a name tag on the uniform, saying 'Ramsey'.

Vader could feel how the man patted on his shoulder.

"So," the man said," The Empire strikes back to have the revenge of the Sith? You're never going to beat me in chess..."

With those words the man disappeared from the chamber, staring at the space where the man had been before.

After a while he abruptly turned around and stalked out of the communication chamber to make sure that he left the presence of Tarkin as soon as he could. He knew that he would have to fight down the urge to straggle the Great Moff after his victory over the Rebels.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Vice Admiral Usagi Chiba had her arms crossed behind her back and frowned slightly as she walked down one of the corridors of her current flagship. Her Kinhiryuu, Nimitz, was still draped around her shoulder, but the micro-dragon managed to pick up her mood rather effectively. And he showed his irritation by glaring at random crewmen, setting parts of the wall to fire with his pyrokinetic ability or simply drummed his tail against her shoulder.

For a moment Usagi wished that he was intelligent, but in mind he was like the mix of a cat and a dog. Independent like a cat, but at the same time loyal as a dog and with the intelligence of a primitive primate.

Behind her she knew her two adjutants, the Commanders Drenth and Yakai Misano. One a Soloni, the other a Chibri. Both were members of rather unique races of the Commonwealth and their races were likely to be the most numerous races once they had started to colonize the surrounding space.

The Soloni were a sentient race that was basically a collective of carbon based micro-biotic life, contained inside a silicon based shell that could have many different shaped, based on the whim and the needs of a given collective. The collective Drenth was looking like it stepped out of a Giger painting, having the same technoganic look Giger was known for. The black gleaming shell that hovered two inch above the ground contained enough of the single biotics to make him more powerful as any computer of his size.

Luckily all they needed to live was light, water and any soil that contained silicon and carbon.

The Chibri on the other hand were a race that had evolved from rodent like lifeforms. However, they had developed a very humanoid shape, even through they were lucky if they managed to live more than fifteen years. Now with prolong treatments they could live as long as any human. One had never seen anyone being hyperactive when they hadn't seen a Chibri. And coffee actually slowed them down, so that they could work with humans or anyone else without being too fast.

They also shared the same fate as the Shin'bi when it came to their history and they had become a victim of slavers who sold them as pets. As result they had developed a very advanced military and within several generations, about forty years, their military code had advanced to be very much like that of humans, at least when it came to ground battles. Of course they had lost many of their number, but being rodent-based sentients, they were breeding like rodents and families with six and more children wasn't unheard of.

There had been a problem however. They hadn't become larger during their evolution and so the largest of them was ten inch tall. And to overcome their problems while fighting human sized opponents they had developed fighting machines they called 'Mobile Suits'. They were about as large as a human and more than one scientist had pointed out that they were actually looking very much like human sized Gundams or Veritechs. Of cause they were not transforming vehicles. And the influence of human media and anime, their Mobile Suits were patterned after Gundams during the last generations.

And last but not least was the reason why they had been a prime target of the slavers. In essence they happened to be superdeformed humans or 'Chibis' as they were called sometimes, very much like it was in anime. Large heads and unbelievingly cute, especially if they tried not to be. And they tried a lot.

Usagi stopped and breathed in deep as the door in front of her opened, allowing her to look into one of the briefing rooms of the command staff. Currently it contained only two people, Kyle Katarn and Jen Ors. Usagi stifled a short chuckle at the thought of what they would say if they knew what the Commonwealth knew. But on the other hand that knowledge was largely useless now.

"Mr. Katarn, Mrs. Ors," she said and slowly entered the room." I'm Vice Admiral Usagi Chiba, the commander of this fleet."

She pointed at the adjutants.

"My adjutants, Commanders Drenth and Yakai Misano."

Katarn raised an eyebrow, looking at Ors.

"You are giving droids military ranks?" he wondered.

"Wearenotdriods," came a high pitched voice from the standard RX-78 of Misano, which was rather slow for him when he was not on coffee.

"yes," came the rather gravely sounding voice of Drenth from multiple of the speaker like collectives all across his exostructure. "we can asure you that we are very biological lifeforms, through different to the non-collectives that seem to populate most planets."

Usagi sighed. She had known that something like this would happen. The Soloni were rather proud not to be 'non-collectives', as they called most other races, or AIs. The Chibri on the other hand didn't like to be seen as only their Mobile Suits. And the standard Chibri response to show that they were not robots, was to open their cockpits.

Usagi sighed again as she heard the light hiss of hydraulics as the chest plate of the RX-78 opened up and Misano stepped away from his pilot seat. He stood on the breastplate that had swung down and put his arms on his hips and glared at Ors and Katarn.

"How cute!" was the immediate response of Ors and Usagi had to fight the urge to bang her head against a wall as she saw the very adoring face of the Rebel agent. So much for being able to talk to those two without any problems.

Instead she looked on her watch. Only three more hours to go until they arrived at Yavin.

-----------------------------------------------------------

General Jan Dodonna frowned as he looked at the transcript of the message that was received by the _Millennium_ _Falcon_ during their escape from the Death Star.

"Is this authentic?" he asked and looked at the various members of the Rebellion that were responsible for the agents and contacting them.

"As far as we can tell it is," came the answer.

Dodonna looked back at the transcript.

"Could Katarn have been forced to encode this?"

"Even if he would have been forced to do it, we know what too look at. He would have contained a secret message in it that would tell us that its a lie. There is a second secret message in it, but it says that the proposal seems to be genuine. We will have to wait."

He looked at the transcript again and than at the crystal that contained a copy of the Death Stars plans.

"And the Death Star? Have you found a weakness?"

Another of the analysts nodded.

"Yes, we did. There is a thermal exhaust port in one of the trenches of the Death Star. But its only two meters across. And its protected by a ray shield."

Dodonna frowned and leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes for a moment.

"We'd need a precision attack on..."

He was interrupted as a technician stormed into the room.

"General, an unknown ship just entered orbit around the moon!"

Dodonna jerked up and all but jumped from his chair.

"Imperial?"

"No, sir. It's a completely unknown configuration, but it has similarities with the Tartan cruisers, only much larger."

The technician swallowed.

"Its about the size of a Star Destroyer."

Without a word, Dodonna hurries out of his office and towards the main control room of the Rebel Base on Yarin IV. He wasn't surprised to see Princess Leia and the other commanders of the Base already being there.

"The X-Wing squadron has entered visual range of the unknown vessel. One of the R2 units is sending us a visual."

The main viewer of the command center changed from the tactical display to the image of an X-Wings frontal part partly overlaying the view on the unknown ship. Up close, it did look like a Tartan Cruiser, but on the other hand there were very large and very visible turrets all over the ships structure that couldn't be turbolasers. Two stubby structures stuck out from the main bodies sides and carried a number of what seemed to be fins or some kind. The darker gray color and the hexagon like segments of armor were absolutely unlike any design anyone had seen before, even on a warship.

And this ship was clearly a warship. And it looked more intimidating than any Star Destroyer could ever hope to look.

"Incoming communication attempt."

"Open the receiving channel," Dodonna ordered before anyone else could.

"Massassi Station," a human voice said," this is _ICS_ _Ticonderoga_ of the Interstellar Commonwealth. Please respond and take a visual connection. Massassi Station this is _ISC_..."

The voice continued to repeat the words being very patient in doing so.

Dodonna and the other generals looked at Princess Leia, who nodded and than looked at the screen.

"Open a transmitting channel," she said." This is Massassi Station."

The main viewer changed again, showing the smiling face of a human male in a khaki colored rather comfortable looking uniform. There were a number of color coded stripes on the left chest of the uniform and a number of other markings, including a small patch that seemed to be the name of the man.

"I'm Captain Marcel Deveraux, Interstellar Commonwealth Navy, commander of the _Ticonderoga_. We come in peace and want to talk to your leader."

The mans smile widened and he chuckled a little.

"I always wanted to say that," he all but muttered, but the microphones on his side picked it up.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Ronald Tasker stared out into the undefinable medium of slipstream as the Corbin Space Jet _Topaz_ made her way through the Galaxy and towards the planet of Corusant. Life had defiantly made a turn for the strange in the last few month.

He looked over to his partner, Dao of the Hakaden clan, one of the few Shin'bi before the Exodus to work for the Commonwealth Intelligence Agency. He had been partnered up with her for the last few years and as 'smugglers' they had worked for several shady organizations through out the Milky Way, always doing their job to inject false informations, strike teams and extracting informations to destabilize those organizations from within. And they had done some very good work during that time.

The Earth build Heinkel Space Jet hadn't been much of a problem as Heinkel had managed to grab a very large part of the market for private vessels throughout the Milky Way and so Space Jets hadn't been that much of an unknown sight. Add to that the very run down look of the _Topaz_ and you had someone who looked the part of a shady 'smuggler', even if the ship in question was fitted with the latest in technology.

They had been lucky that their last 'job' had been to deliver informations back to Earth about several operations of one of the Milky Ways many criminal organizations, so they had been caught up in the Exodus and ended up here. Only to be about to get into their 'old' job, just more specialized this time.

They were going to infiltrate Black Sun, one of the large crime syndicates of the Galaxy, to gain information about them as well as disrupting their operations when the time came to build up a new Interstellar Commonwealth.

And than there was Charles...

"Credit for your thoughts?" he head his partner ask and he gave her a short glare.

He sighed in response.

"Just wondering if Charles will be able to keep his sentience when he spreads himself out over the Imperial Palace."

A chuckle came from behind them and Ronald turned a little to look at the holographic projection of Roger Moore in his James Bond days.

"I believe that I will be quite able to keep myself together," he noted with a dry grin," I have covered Europe at one time and keeps myself. An area like the Imperial Palace is not much of a problem."

The projection shrugged.

"I'm a little more concerned about being cleaned away or fried by dust repelling force fields. On the other hand I hope that I will give Palpatine an allergy."

Ronald snorted while Dao shook her head with a smile.

"Well, lets hope he develops an allergy against Smart Dust."

-----------------------------------------------------------

Admiral Ban Danna sighed as he looked down upon his new orders. He had been quite surprised to hear that the universe they were residing was based on an Earthern trilogy of movies.

He shook his head. He had talked to Admiral Ryan and she had told him that they had some very useful knowledge about this universe, even if they currently only possessed star charts of the known parts of the Galaxy. But it had been enough for Nathan, Merlin and Seneca to interpolate the position of all known planets in the areas known as Wild Space or Unknown Regions.

And he and his fleet had been ordered to explore one specific area of the Unknown Regions and initiate First Contact with a race called the Chiss.

He placed his orders to the side and reached out for his keyboard and opened a file that contained a number of psychological profiles of Chiss and the Chiss race as a whole. Most of this informations were based on a number of novels.

As he looked at the file and the profiles he noted a few similarities between the Ferrons and the Chiss. The most striking similarities were the blue skin and the size of the both races, through their origins were quite different. For one the Chiss originated from an ice world, while the Ferrons came from a world that was considered tropical by most races.

Noting the fact that the Chiss were a rather xenophobic race, he knew the reason of Admiral Ryan and the President to assign the job to him and his small fleet. His race looked very similar to the Chiss and any diplomatic contact might be easier.

Danna leaned back as he finished reading the files. Now he had just wait for the Ambassador they were going to send him, who was to carry out the diplomatic things of this operation.


	11. Chapter 11

Empire

by Warringer

Chapter 10

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"Leaving Slipstream in 4..."

'The Lady' stood in the center of _Pegasus_' Command and Control like a large rock in the middle of the center of a gathering storm, looking at one of the numerous holographic projections that were floating in the large command center of the ship.

"3..."

Data of all kinds floated over the holographic projections, more than any human eye could ever hope to be able to gather. As a technomage, the pink haired Read Admiral however had a number of cybernetic implants that were currently tied into the wireless information network of the ship and helped to filter the incoming informations.

"2..."

Most of the people in the fleet had similar implants since they had gotten widely available in the early twenties of the current century. But none of these implants was as powerful as those of a full technomage. For a moment her eyes fell on the two natives of the Galaxy Far Far Away, wondering what they would think about these implants or that Earth pretty much had a good number of people available that could be called 'Jedi' by them.

"1..."

But for the moment that didn't matter. All what mattered was that they managed to take down the Death Star before it could destroy more planets.

"Normal space reentry."

Almost immediately the informations on the holographic displays changed and Usagi nodded to herself, her finger moving up to scratch Nimitz where his neck connected to his skull, getting a slight purr from him.

"Position?" she asked.

"50.000 from Yavin IV, relative speed to the moon one point seven kmsec."

Usagi nodded again.

"Okay, people, now it gets interesting. Order to the fleet. We are moving to L2 of Yavin and Yavin IV. All units into formation. The Nadesicos are moving into screening positions for maximum sensory coverage."

Around her people nodded and she crossed her arms over her chest as they began to relay her her orders. Sure she could have just given the orders and transmitted them directly through her implants and the tac net, but there was no need for that. Something like that was commonly only done during direct combat situations.

"Admiral," another technician said," We are having contact to the _Ticonderoga_."

She nodded.

"Open a channel to Captain Deveraux."

Only a short moment later another hologram was added to the many displays hovering in CNC. This time it showed the Canadian commander of _Ticonderoga_.

"Captain Deveraux," she said," I trust you everything went well?"

Deveraux frowned a little.

"Yes, sowhat," he answered." It seems that they are very insistent on using a small strike force to defeat the Death Star."

Usagi shook her head and her glance went back towards Katarn and Ors for a moment.

"Have you told them how large the fleet is?"

Deveraux nodded.

"Yes, I have, but they don't really believe me."

Usagi shook her head again.

"Than we are going to surprise them with our numbers. You will remain in close orbit around Yavin IV, Captain, make sure that nothing gets past you in the case that there are some stranglers."

Deveraux nodded at his orders.

"Wilco," her answered." When are you awaiting the ground support?"

Usagi smirked rather evilly.

"In about six hours," she said." But we managed to bring the Valkyries with us a advanced planetary defense force. _Pegasus_ out."

Usagi could see Deveraux's eyes grow wide as she mentioned the Valkyries, who happened to be one of the most valued, feared and even worshiped BOLO company in existence. They were consisting of BBL-01 to BBL-03 units and all of them were build by Scandinavian Companies and their AIs had taken on the names and mannerisms of the Asgardian Valkyries of the Norse faith.

Usagi shook her head for a moment. Thanks to Alexander and the way he died and what he had quoted before he had died as a hero, the Norse faith had been reborn. Most of it was rather romantically tainted, but Usagi had to say that most of the Asgardians, as those of the new Norse faith were called, lived up to the recent picture of the Vikings, who weren't only warriors.

She gave a nod towards one of the technicians.

"Order the _Sleipnir_ to prepare for landing operations at Massassi Station. And get a connection to the station, we don't want them to think that we are invaders, do we?"

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"Preemptive warfare?"

Hikaru von Bismark massaged his temples as he looked at one of his Joint Chiefs. He had just send a fleet to bolster the defense of Yavin and hopefully make sure that the Death Star was destroyed. And now the Joint Chiefs were coming with this idea.

"Yes, sir," was the reply of General Thor Gunnarson, who was the current head of military planning in the Pentagon.

Hikaru looked tiredly at the Norwegian Marine and sighed. Like in all the weeks before the Transfer and the nearly two days they were in the Star Wars galaxy now, he had gotten little sleep and the constant meeting with everyone and their dog was long since tiring him out. Ancient and Shin'bi genetics aside, it was taking its toll on the President of the Interstellar Commonwealth that was currently only consisting of a single planet.

"We never have stepped as low as fighting preemptive warfare."

Gunnarson looked him in the eyes and grit his teeth.

"We never had to resort to it because we were never going against an opponent like the Galactic Empire ruled by Palpatine."

He breathed in deep and leaned back in his seat, closing his eyes for a moment. Gunnarson was right. The Galactic Empire was vastly different to the Federation or the Union. They at least had a certain resemblance to the old European Empires of the late 19th century, down to the 'White Mens Burden'. The Empire on the other hand was reminding everyone more of the 3rd Reich of Hitler., maybe even worse. And everyone knew how that had ended.

Sure, the Empire might end in about five years and Palpatine die, at least for the first time. But during that time, the Empire was able to bring more death and destruction to the Galaxy than the Nazis ever did.

And it would all end up in an ineffective government that didn't knew how to tie their shoes and relied on the Jedi to pull them out of the sticky situations they had maneuvered themselves in.

"No," he said with a sigh and his seat swung around to face the large window of the Office. "I'm sure you already have plans for that?"

Behind him, Gunnarson nodded.

"Yes, sir. WE intend to strike a number of strategically important worlds of the Empire, raiding and destroying as many military hardware and installations as possible to force the Empire to look the other way for a while."

Hikaru swung his seat back around to face Gunnarson, leaning forward.

"Giving us and the Rebels time to further destabilize the Empire," he noted.

"Essentially yes, sir."

Gunnarson got a strange smile on his face.

"There are some plans to salvage as many Star Destroyers from their docks as possible and turn them into scrap metal, Trojan Horses or give them to the Rebels as a present. It would deny the Empire a number of their growing fleet."

Hikaru leaned back again.

"And than we have a number of Androgyns," Gunnarson continued," Who are volunteering to wage guerrilla war against the Empire on planets or large stations by building large forces of drone platforms from local materials."

Hikaru shook his head. The Androgyns were a robotic design that had become very sought after for low-cost warfare. Essentially they were mobile tank sized microbotic fabbers that could be placed on any planet and began to build large numbers of drones of any kind. They had their uses aside from warfare as they also made good factories for small colonies that were still building up. Being full fledged AIs they were fully recognized citizens of the Commonwealth.

"I think they like to see themselves as saviors of the droids, aren't they?" he wondered for a moment.

"Could be like that, sir," Gunnarson said.

They were silent for a few moments until Hikaru nodded.

"I want a full priority list of all military and infrastructural installations for your Operation 'Clay Feet'. Than we let Merlin and Nathan go over them with a fine comb."

-----------------------------------------------------------

"Contact," the voice of a technician called out through CNC of _Pegasus_." _Farseer_ is reporting contact with a large metal mass that has appeared just outside of Yavin's gravity well."

Admiral Chiba frowned as he checked her chronometer.

"Data?" she asked, more for the commanders of the Rebel Alliance that were currently on Pegasus, than for herself, who was receiving the information through her implants.

"Contact is about 160 kilometers in diameter and masses several hundred billion metric tons. Currently moving at relative zero zero six cee at bearing zero fiver two point one one niner."

"Display," she said out loud, while giving a mental order to CNCs computers.

Within moments a large tactical display had replaced the numerous other displays in the center of CNC, getting gasps from the Rebel leaders.

The display showed the gas giant of Yavin, orbited by its natural and unnatural moons, while the fleet was displayed a a larger number of small green icons on a line from Yavin to Yavin IV and beyond. Another larger symbol of an orange color was displayed nearly on the other side of the planet, with a curving orbital path being displayed for it, intercepting with Yavin IV's orbit a good distance from Yavin IV.

"Line of sight?" she asked.

"One hour, thirty minutes."

Usagi nodded and smirked a little.

"Compare it to the data of the Death Star," she ordered and looked over to General Dodonna and Princess Leia.

"One hundred percent match," was the answer and the icon changed colors to red.

Usagi breathed in deep.

"General Order to the Fleet. All hands to Battlestations. Start all fighters and prepare for long range ballistic artillery bombardment of the target."

Across the middle of CNC, she could see how Dodonna pulled out a radio to order his elite squadron of fighters to launch. It was refreshing to see how the Rebels went white as sheets.

"I want all ballistic trajectories displayed on the main screen," she continued to give her orders." And get a nice close up image of a Von Braun."

A second display appeared above the tactical display, showing the body of a Von Braun, as it fired massive reaction thrusters to slowly begin to rotate until it rolled one every twenty seconds, allowing it to fire six broadsides of sixty missiles each minute.

The cloud of missile pods all around the fleet began to reposition themselves directed by the command centers of the control ship.

On the display a very large cloud of blue trajectories began to appear, showing the path the missiles fired by the two hundred Von Brauns and the numerous pods would take, meeting with the projected path of the Death Star along the way.

Usagi crossed her arms behind her back, looking at the display with a controlled facial expression. For a moment she wondered if this was the way of warfare in the Honor-verse. The cloud of fighters that were displayed as moving away from the fleet and meeting up with the single symbol of Rouge Squadron however changed that mental image.

Her expression slowly turned into smirks as the cloud of ballistic paths grew and one by one changed to a green color.

"Order to the Fleet," she slowly said." Initiate long range ballistic saturation bombardment."

The display exploded into a multitude of yellow dots as the assorted Von Braun's and Pods fired the initial barrage, sending more than ten thousand missiles on their way towards the Death Star.

They would need about fifteen minutes to arrive and when they did they would have accelerated to a low fraction of light speed, adding kinetic energy to the energy of their warheads.

The smaller display of the Von Braun showed how the ship slowly rolled and suddenly one side erupted as missile after missile left its port missile launchers in a perfect rippled launch.

"Lets see if we can get a reaction out of the Death Star this way."


	12. Chapter 12

Empire

by Warringer

Chapter 11

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Commander Hunter breathed in deep and swallowed as he watched a close von Braun rolling around, each half rotation ripple launching another set of sixty missiles.

Than ten minutes after the launch of the first missiles the massive vessels slowed down, having spend all their missiles in launch after launch. If his flight computer was right, those ships had just launched a massive barrage of more than three million missiles

"JR Lead, this is _Pegasus_ Control. You are go for attack run."

"Roger that, _Pegasus_ Control," he answered and switched to the Squadron channel." Okay people, lets go and destroy a Death Star."

One by one his squadron acknowledged and he breathed in as he pushed the throttle forwards. Than he looked towards the massive planet that was Yavin and into the direction where the Death Star was hidden behind the massive gas giant.

He looked at his chronometer. Five minutes until the first of the missiles would be impacting on the shield but hopefully on the hull of the Death Star. As pilot of a space fighter he knew that the missiles had been going on a path that lead them extremely close to Yavin in a fly-by maneuver and with that had gained a good boost of speed.

"Wonder how the DS is going to take the missiles," someone asked over tac-net and at once it was filled with chatter.

"Silence," than came a firm female voice over the tac-net, shutting everyone up.

Hunter nodded to himself.

Yes, it was fitting for Lady Harrington to do something like this. But the silence became more and more uncomfortable, even as the Rebel X-Wings joined up with the massive wall of fighters and assorted small craft like Space Jets and attack bombers.

"Oh frack," someone suddenly uttered." Is that a pink X-Wing?"

It was followed by another, through short chatter over tac-net and Hunter had to close his eyes for a moment before looking around, trying to see that specific X-Wing.

He didn't have to look very long to spot it, even among the white X-Wings the pink fighter was sticking out like a sore thumb.

Great, since when had the crew chiefs of the Rebels allowed someone to paint their fighters and how much they had gotten payed for it. Any Chief of the Commonwealth would have straggled a pilot asking for something like that.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Technician Andre Alfek swallowed as he looked at his screen and than up towards Tarkin and the other commanding officers of the Death Star.

The number of small objects coming towards the massive battlestation was insane. And each of them was at least twice the size of a Lambda class shuttle and coming at the station at very high speed.

For a moment he wondered if he should really tell Tarkin about these objects, but a technician next to him didn't have the time to ask himself the same question.

"Sir," the poor guy spoke up." Several thousand objects are moving to intercept us."

Alfek could see him swallow.

"It seem to be missiles, sir."

He was careful not to look very attentively at the reaction of the Great Moff as he turned around, his hands put together on his back. At the same time, he was glad that Darth Vader was not here anymore, having left the Death Star together with most of the 501st Legion a few hours before.

"Missiles?" Tarkin asked." Where do they come from."

Alfek could see his colleague swallow slightly.

"Yavin IV, sir."

Tarkin raised an eyebrow and turned back towards the massive armored window pane of the Over Bridge.

"Missiles," he once again said, but this time, it was a statement and not a question.

Silence descended over the Over Bridge, as everyone waited for his orders.

"Desperate," he stated and straightened." Activate the shields. Lets see how much the missiles strain it."

Alfek breathed in deep. He wondered how Tarkin was able to keep his cool with...

He looked back down at his console and nearly gasped. As it was his eyes nearly bulged out of their sockets.

... more than a hundred thousand missiles, coming at them wave after wave.

Alfek doubted that he would survive this day.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Slowly she took the large mug of coffee to her lips and took a long sip from the steaming hot black liquid inside. Her eyes were focusing on the large tactical display that was floating in the center of _ICS_ _Pathfinder_, one of the numerous Nadesico class vessels that were moving around Yavin. And _Pathfinder_ was only a lightsecond away from the Death Star, keeping a low profile even as her powerful sensory systems were taking in all information that was presented to them.

"Get me a closeby of the Death Star," Captain Aiko Harris ordered in a neutral tone as she took another sip from her mug of coffee and adjusted her wings slightly.

For a moment she looked down into the mug, noting that she would have to refill it soon. Well, being a coffee Junkie was better than being on Twinkies like her old man.

Another smaller display appeared above the tactical image, showing the Death Star in all its glory, hovering as one meter sphere above the tactical plot of the Yavin gravitational system.

The display showed how a cloud of red lines were moving towards the Death Star, intersecting with a part of the Death Stars course that it would take for ten minutes. Even if the Death Star changed course or velocity, the intersecting lines would still hit it as the missiles would be able to make last minute corrections to their course as their targeting systems were feed by _Pathfinder_.

"Time to impact," she ordered again, for a moment wondering if she should refill her mug now or if she should wait a while longer, not wanting to miss the more than three hundred thousand missiles hitting the moon sized battle station.

"One minute, ma'am," came the answer from one of her technicians in the bridge crew.

For a moment she looked over to him, chuckling at the rather classical image of a bespectacled nerd sitting in front of a computer. Like her old man had said, a Harris would always end up with a crew made up of nerds and geeks. The same was true for her twin brother after all. Only that she had ended up with her fathers second command after his first Monsoon, the good old _USS A Highly Effective Pirate_, that had rammed a Doranian Dreadnought to save the _Enterprise_ during the Doranian War.

"Good," she answered after a moment and stepped a little closer to the tactical plot.

Through the wireframe cloud plot she could see how other members of the bridge crew, turned to look at the plot and the display of the Death Star themselves. Out of the corner of her eyes she was able to see how her Second in Command began to look very interested at the display and started to sweat ever so slightly. Considering that on a ship full of nerds he was one of the few Warsies, it was a little understandable.

"Thirty Seconds."

The first blot of more than ten thousand lines shortened more and more, very visible on the display as any of the missiles was moving with a low fraction of lighspeed.

"I want a full reading on the Death Stars shields and its energy production. And get me the top speed of the impacting missiles."

Three additional displays appeared next the Death Star, two of them showing three dimensional Fourier analysis of the shields and energy production, while the third simply showed a slowly climbing number.

Of course she didn't exactly know what the two upper displays showed, but the third display of the top speed was making her chuckle a little. Current top speed was point three lightspeed and would most likely climb to point three two or point three three in the next few seconds until impact.

"Two... One... Impact."

The first hundred thousand lines disappeared completely on the tactical display before the display that showed the Death Star bathed Command and Control in the light of thousands of detonation.

Ten thousands of high yield nuclear and gravitic warheads detonated with different effects all over the forward shield. While the nuclear warheads produced massive short lived suns, the gravitic warheads seemed to create short lived black spots, even against the bulk of the Death Star and the light of the nuclear detonations.

Harris' glance went towards the upper analysis displays to see how they presented little more than solid blocks of red, the analysis software redlining the values.

There were sounds of displeasure heard throughout CNC as the Death Star appeared to be unharmed by the massive bombardment of missiles from the first salvo.

"Zoom on the Super Laser," she ordered and the display showing the Death Star zoomed in.

Now there were several cheers heard, as the indention of the Super Lasers Focussing Array showed a number of dents and black spots, as the entire salvo had been targeted at that particular part of the Death Star. It showed that there had been a number of warheads that had managed to pass the shield and slamm into the hull of the Death Star.

But it also showed that the armor of the massive battle station was nothing to sneeze at.

"Second salvo, Impact."

Again the screen, still zoomed at the Super Laser bathed CNC in the light of ten thousands of detonations.

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The Overbridge of the Death Star shook as hundreds of missiles of various yield managed to penetrate the overly taxed shields, each of the massive salvos of missiles managing to weaken the powerful shield of the Death Star more and more.

"We lost a secondary super laser!"

Alfek swallowed, his eyes locked on the screen in front of him.

To say that this was bad, was to say that the surface of a star was a little bit warm. This was more than bad, somewhere along the lines of 'Being eaten by a Sarlacc' bad.

Lights of numerous explosions outside was shining through the large windowpanes of the Overbridge, causing a number of the crew members to panic slightly.

Alfek however remained surprisingly calm. He wasn't even near panic, through he was nervous.

"There are more missiles incoming," he stated after a moment, as the light of the detonations dimmed down. Only to be violently be ignited again.

The shields were still able to take the missiles, but once again several hundreds were coming through, detonating not too far away from the Overbridge. Each of the detonations managed to cause the massive sphere of the Death Star to vibrate like a bell, sending the entire structure into shaking movements that couldn't even be compensated by the gravity generators or inertial dampeners, as those were shaking too.

"We lost another secondary laser!"

Alfek closed his eyes to breathe in deep. He looked up again and managed to get a brief glimpse of Great Moff Tarkin's face. The calm arrogance was all but whiped away as the man tried to keep himself steady on the way from the Overbridge.

Yes, it would be a good idea if he did the same, but he knew that the Stormtroopers wouldn't allow him to dessert his post. And the Overbridge could be hit by one of the missiles any moment now, considering that most of those missiles were directed at the Super Laser and impacted below the Overbridge.

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"It is time," the voice of The Lady came over the TacNet.

Commander Hunter nodded to himself and breathed in deep. The Death Star was now in visual range and the shield of the large battle station was very visible. Large lightning like discharges were running all across the visible surface and Hunter was willing to bet that it was very close to actually collapsing.

_"Lo, there do I see my father,"_ suddenly was heard over the TacNet as one of the pilots of the Norse faith started to chant the Viking prayer that had been re-introduced by Alexander.

_"Lo, there do I see my mother, my sisters and my brothers,"_

More and more pilots and crew members of the small craft were falling in into the chanting.

_"Lo, there do I see the line of my people back to the beginning,"_

Hunter could feel how goosebumps were forming on his back. Okay, it was all but tradition that at least one pilot of a squadron would chant the prayer, but this was insane.

_"Lo, they do call to me,"_

He closed his eyes before starting to run the last of his checks.

_"They bid me take my place on Asgard in the halls of Valhalla,"_

"What the hell is that?" He suddenly heard over the short range InfoChannel that had been opened to connect the Rebel fighters to the rest of the large fleet of fighters and small craft.

_"Where the brave may live forever."_

"The Prayer to the Dead," Hunter said a while after the chant had stopped.

He wanted to say more, but the radio was suddenly blocked from the outside as a powerful transmission came from all around them, most likely send by the numerous Nadesicos. It stared like a normal charol, but the text was something that caused Hunter to swallow.

_"Raise thy weapons on this day  
ye shall not die alone  
fight and die let valkyries fly  
for they shall take thee home  
i promise thee that on this night  
ye shall be by my side  
asgard's halls await with heroes  
brothers that have died  
for thee we wait at asgard's gates  
come join us by our side  
valhalla waits so choose thy fate  
for all of us must die!"_

As the transmission ended, the voice of The Lady could be heard as clear as day.

"You shall not pass."


	13. Chapter 13

Empire

by Warringer

Chapter 12

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"They have to be insane."

Kyle Katarn was thinking the same, the unnamed technician in the Command Center of Massassi Station had said out loud.

"Nice people you found there, Kyle," he said to himself, unable to pry his eyes away from the display.

It wasn't only that had they pulled a large fleet together in a very short amount of time, but also that they seemed to know what they should send. And a large number of the ships send were dedicated carriers and these arsenal ships, that had managed to pump out salvo after salvo of missiles for ten minutes straight.

And each of those salvos had enough yield to bring visible strain to a shield that had to be at planetary shield level.

It made him wonder why these people needed this much firepower.

"Far from being insane," a female voice said from the background of the Command Center." They are warriors. And they are ready to join the brave in Valhalla."

This was the only reason for him to pry his eyes away from the display to stare at the group of six, uhm, people that were standing in the back of the Command Center.

The chain mail and leather armor, the iron helmets, broad swords, lances and iron shields made them look very out of place in the modern setting of the Command Center. They seemed to belong more to a very primitive planet than into the Center of the Rebellion.

To make matters worse was the fact that all six were tall, blue eyed, blond women with bodies that made every male all but salivate, and got them the dirty looks from just about any female of the Rebellion. Well, safe for the too inhuman ones anyway.

They had arrived with a large ship named _Sleipnir_ and with the six very massive mobile weapon platforms. The crew of the ship had called them Avatars of the 'Bolos' and they had been extremely humble while in the presence of the six women. But they also called them Valkyries.

Through if they were really women was a problem. When asked what an 'Avatar' was, one of _Sleipnir_'s crew members had said they were the android bodies of the Bolos. And the term 'android' was very close to 'droid'. So most people wondered if those six weren't something of human-looking droids.

"The Death Star's shields are failing!" someone else called out and Kyle's eyes were back on the screen.

A direct video link to one of the fighters showed how the lightnings that were dancing across the shield of the Death Star disappeared, and made the surface visible.

There was more than one gasp in the Command Center as everyone stared at the screen.

The entire visible surface of the Death Star was visibly damaged. Considering the sheer size of the battle station, that was meaning something about the destructive capacity of the Commonwealths weapons.

"Surface damage," one of the Valkyries, Thrúd, said after a moment." The armor of the Death Star is about a kilometer thick. Even without shields it might have been able to survive the attack."

Kyle swallowed dry as he looked over to their guests. Thrúd had sounded like she was stating a mere fact.

"Unfortunate that the _Bahamut_ is not here," said a second Valkyrie, Skuld.

Together with Thrúd, she seemed to be the leader of the Valkries.

"It is fate that _Bahamut_ is not with us," the third, Mist, noted.

The comment got her a slap from Skuld and something that looked like a playful scrowl, while the others laughed very audible.

"Hey," was Mist's response as she reached up to keep her helmet from falling off her head.

Around them any Rebel was itching away from them.

Who the hell were these people?

Kyle was pretty sure that he was sharing this thought with many of the Rebels in the Command Center.

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Alfek stared at his console or at least what was left from it after one of the many missiles had hit about a kilometer distant, taking out one of the Secondary Lasers. The Overbridge was worse to wear and biting smoke was filling up the room from numerous fires that weren't kept under control by the numerous firefighter driods.

Around him most of the crewmen manning the Overbridge had been thrown around by the impact and the insuring shock wave as it traveled through the massive structure of the Death Star. They all had some sort of injury and some of the Stormtroopers and medical droids were trying to help. Alfek himself had a broken arm that was only temporarily dressed.

He looked up from his console at the main view port, where a long crack was very visible and even audible. He swallowed as looked back down.

He was looking at several ten thousands of fighter and similar craft coming towards the Death Star. And the shields had failed just a minute ago. He doubted that the TIEs would be winning much against this many fighters coming at them.

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Grant Moff Wilhuff Tarkin grit his teeth as he hurried down one of the many corridors of the Death Star. He was not quite running, but only just barely. There was a growing panic in the back of his head.

He didn't know any place that build such missiles, either in size, yield or quantity. Had the Rebels unearthed some sort of Separatist factory from the Clone War? Or had they managed to find allies somewhere in the Unknown Territories?

He tried to control the look on his face as he walked faster out of the turbolift and towards the hangar with his personal shuttle.

For a moment his mind registered that the shaking had stopped, but considering the massive bombardment of missiles for the last ten minutes, he had this bad feeling that there was something much large to come.

He slowed down his walk as he approached the hangar and even managed to shoot a glare at the guarding Stormtroopers. He was glad that Vader and his personal Stormtroopers had left prior to the Death Star entering Yavin.

He strode towards the shuttle, his mind falling into turmoil over the Rebel attack. The Death Star had proven that is was not as invincible as he would have liked. Who would have thought that they had been attacked with a large number of fast moving missiles that a Turbolaser had no chance to intercept? And in such a large number that they did overwhelm the shields and destroyed the Superlaser?

His goal from here was clear. He would travel to the Maw and order the design and construction of a much more powerful Death Star. One where any possibilities, such as a missile attack was accounted for. And he would have to keep away from the Emperor.

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"Lookie there," Aiko Harris noted as she took a sip from her ever present mug of coffee." What do we have here..."

Next to her her second in command, Commander Jethro Wells, chuckled a little.

"Looks like a Lambda class shuttle," he noted.

"Course projection," she ordered and a blue line appeared on the holographic display.

The line was curving a little towards the edge of the gravitic field of Yavin, as well as going away from Yavin IV and the approaching fleet of fighters and small craft.

Wells grinned evilly.

"It's moving towards us and will pass us in a hundred klicks distance," he said sounding eerily like a villain going 'I have a cunning plan'. All that was missing was him twirling a villain mustache or rubbing his hands.

"I wonder who is crapping his pants enough to leave?" Aiko wondered and sipped some more of her personal drug.

"Can't be Vader," Wells said." A hundred quid that its Tarkin who soild his pants."

Aiko grinned at Wells.

"You're on, Wells," she said with a grin and looked towards the helm." Get us on an intercept course with that shuttle and tell our Marines to prepare for boarding."

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Hikaru von Bismark raises an eyeridge as he looked at General Gunnarson.

"You work fast," he noted as he glanced back down on the PAD with the list of priority targets in the Galactic Empire.

"That is our job, sir," the large Marine noted with a wry grin and Hikaru noted that he would not be that much out of place on a Viking longboat or in charge of a Viking attack force, through it was not too much of a stretch to come from the Marines to the Viking warriors.

Hikaru nodded and looked back on the list. Two names of planetary systems were standing out on the absolute top of the list. Kuat and Corellia.

Since they had found out that they had been stranded in the Star Wars Universe, he had used whatever free time he had and didn't need to sleep, to catch up on everything they did know about the Empire. Considering the vast collection of various information in the so called Wookiepedia as well as other sources. Most names on the list were meaning at least something to him.

Kuat was the home of the Kuat Drive Yards and the premier production facility for the Imperial Fleet. Both Star Destroyers and TIE fighters were build there, but also a good number of civilian models. While the shipyards and production facilities for military and civilian vessels were separated from each other, both were situated on an orbital ring structure. Not unlike the growing structure around Earth.

And that was a problem. Outright destroying the Kuat Drive Yards was impossible without servely destroying a good part of the planet below, which meant civilian casualties.

Corellia on the other hand was known to work, covertly, with the Rebel Alliance. The large number of Corellians and the use of Corellian corvettes in the Alliance Fleet was showing this. But Corellian Engineering was still working for the Empire.

"Kuat and Corellia," he said after a moment." What is the plan for those systems?"

"That is a problem, sir," Gunnarson said and walked up to one of the large windows of The Office." I know that we need to minimize civilian casualties, be it people or installations. One because of the homefront and second to present a positive image to the Galaxy and the Rebel Alliance.

"Current planning calls for the complete destruction of any military shipyard we encounter to hinder the Imperial military buildup. While its rather easily done at Corellia as the Imperial shipyards are very outside of the civilian counterparts, Kuat is a harder nut to crack because of the Orbital Ring.

"According to Nathan even lightly damaging the main structure of the Orbital Ring will destabilize it and send it spiraling down on the surface, making it unhabitable."

Hikaru nodded and looked back at the list.

"Is there any way around it?"

"There might, the spooks of the TIT are currently looking into the use of the Ferron N-Space generator of their Alcubierre System to create a sufficiently dense gravitic field to cover an entire system and prevent any ship leaving and entering Hyperspace. Currently they think of a generator that can shut about ten lightseconds from Hyperspace. That would give us enough time to find and surgically destroy the military shipyards and salvage any material we can."

Hikaru blinked.

"Salvage?"

Gunnarson grinned for a moment at he looked at the President of the Interstellar Commonwealth.

"Salvage. We think about getting salvage ships to the Drive Yards and simply steal as many Star Destroyers as possible, before destroying the rest. Giving some of them to the Alliance might get us in good favor with them."

Hikaru chuckled for a moment and looked back down on the PAD.

"Maw?" he asked after another moment.

"We want to take it and keep it. The position is perfect for a secret base, just like the Empire found out. They got some of their best scientific head on the Maw Installation. If we can take it, we have those heads and a very easily defendable station we just need to build up as military installation. Not to mention damage the Hutts."

Hikaru nodded again.

"Of course there would be a number of diversion attacks throughout the Empire to draw the attention away from the actual attacks."

"Do we have enough ships for this plan?"

Gunnarson closes his eyes for a moment.

"Not really. Only half of our ships are in any shape for a fight and I'd rather wait for the final analysis for of the shields, armor and weapons the Star Destroyer was using."

They were silent for a few moment.

"There is however the possibility to divert the attacks by letting each fleet attack a group of targets one after the other, best would be targets in vicinity to each other."

Hikaru nodded and turned his seat around to look out at the Atlantic Ocean surrounding the massive floating city.

"Continue your planning. I want those plans before the Joint Chiefs and the Parliament ASAP."

Gunnarson saluted.

"Of course, sir."

-----------------------------------------------------------

Hunter breathed in deep as he looked forward and towards the now horizon filling metal sphere that was visibly dented and leaking atmosphere where missiles had hit and ripped huge chunks out of the armor and parts of the superstructure.

"Okay people, here they come," he said after a moment, and narrowed his eyes as he looked at his HUD.

The HUD was showing a large number of smaller contacts breaking off from the Death Star and coming towards them.

It could only be TIE Fighters. And if the data relayed to them from the Nadesicos was correct there were just about four thousand of them. If there used to be any more, their hangars had been hit by the sustained missile barrage.

It would be like shooting fish in a barrel.

"Attack Force, you are go for AA missile use," he heard The Lady say. "On my mark."

He smirked a little and with a thought activated one of his AA missiles. With more than four times the number of fighters and even more small craft, the TIEs had no chance.

"AA missiles?" he heard the voice of Luke Skywalker of all things ask.

"Anti-fighter missiles," someone else simply responded.

"Mark," the voice of The Lady came again and Rick pressed his thumb on the trigger.

It was a sight to behold, like the sight from an anime as more than a hundred thousand high velocity highly maneuverable missiles lept from their under wing positions and towards the poor TIE Fighters.

Rick was close to feeling pitty towards the poor souls of the TIE pilots as he watched how a huge ball of low yield nuclear fire simply came into being, obliterating the TIE defense force.

"That was that," the voice of The Lady came again and Hunter warily looked out towards his wingmen and the X-Wing squadron that would be known as Rouge Squadron, between them.

It was his squadrons job to keep an eye on them and clean the way for the Trench Run. Like the rest of the Attack force the ordinance was mostly made up of Hight-speed Anti Artillery Missiles, short HAAM, through the Artillery was meant to describe just about any shipborne weapon, meant to knock out the Turbolasers along the Trench or the surface.

"Now we pop the balloon."


End file.
